Log Horizon: Right to Rule
by aceofspudz
Summary: In the player city of Dixie the Titan uberguild is the size of the next ten guilds combined. Two weeks after the Catastrophe, an officer in Titan nicknamed Princess sets out on a quest to restore his masculinity.
1. Chapter 1 Part 1

_(Note: There are Log Horizon style chapter-break character sheets on DeviantArt. To find them, search for username aceofspudz.)_

Chapter 1: Kudzu

Part 1

They were six Adventurers seated around a heavy oaken table at a roadside inn and tavern in the Carolinian Wilderness, all members of Titan, the largest and most powerful guild based out of Dixie. It had been fifteen days since they were transported into their avatars in the MMORPG named Elder Tale in a mysterious event known as the Catastrophe.

There was a Guardian named Bonedog and his Runemage brother Aboxorox, a pair of blonde, mountainous vikings with a baleful and taciturn disposition. Bonedog typically wore plate and his brother wore mail. It was difficult to tell them apart if they weren't sporting class specific gear. There was Soap, a barechested, auburn-haired Monk with an insufferable habit of smirking constantly. There were two women Asharia and Morn, one a short and slight tan elf Assassin who loved attention and the other an elven Cleric with kind eyes and shining black hair.

The last character was the mind of the operation, now trapped in his chosen avatar: an elegant, willowy, silver-haired elven Enchantress. Sophie was imposing in the fashion of royalty, a masterwork of the character creator. Everyone called him Princess.

Years ago when he was new to the game and in the process of choosing a character, he was cycling through the grotesques offered up by the character generator's 'extreme randomize' setting when Sophie popped up. He immediately sat bolt upright and leaned in, unable to believe what he was seeing. It was if someone had sneaked one of Tolkien's noble Elves into a lineup full of scruffy criminals and carnival freaks. He saved her settings and continued looking, but nothing else was quite as compelling after.

He decided to go forward with the character creation. He chose Enchanter as his class because he had read on the forums was that it was bar none the lamest of all, and he was curious to see how bad it was. They wouldn't make a class that was simply useless, would they? And if they had, he wanted both the bragging rights for playing on hard and to be the beneficiary of the usual hamfisted class buff that turned them into the most powerful class in the game. He knew no one from his school or real life who was going to play ET, so he was free to play a girl if he liked.

In retrospect both these decisions caused him plenty of unnecessary trouble, but he had no idea then what the magnitude his commitment to Elder Tale would wind up being. In the end that commitment was total. His friends would refer to him—the erstwhile player—as a man when speaking to him. For people who didn't know him or who were speaking off the cuff, it tended to be her-the character. He supposed he was a she now, because the evidence was right there.

The air was cool and crisp, and the wind rose to press against the sturdy frame of the inn and whistle through the gaps. They were relieved to have found shelter after seeing the spring thunderstorm loom towards them from the west. All of them were hunched forlornly over bowls of gruel, looking down into them as if they could see a sorrowful event play out in the tasteless beige soup. An apple sat next to each. Asharia had already reduced hers to a core and finished her gruel. Soap turned to her with a glint in his eye, poking a finger into her side teasingly.

"Do you think you'll take a stealth penalty if you get fat?" he said. Asharia appeared stricken and clasped a hand over her mouth, then her shock dissolved quickly into defensive fury. Soap winced with immediate regret as she spun towards him and brought her hand down on his cheek with an open palm slap. He cleared his throat and held up his hands apologetically. Ash's small size was the result of once being tricked by Soap into believing that it would confer a stealth bonus. A heavy atmosphere descended on the table, partly due to Soap's insensitivity but mostly due to the depressingly bland food. Bonedog began to carve his name into the table with a dagger. Morn decided to step in to break the tension, as she often did. She turned towards Sophie.

"I'm sure there'll be plenty of those polymorph potions up north." Morn said. Her lilting, classic southern accent had a soothing effect on everyone even when carrying such an empty reassurance. Morn was a grandmother in the other world and had values to match. She wound up playing Elder Tale after her husband passed away. Even though Sophie was a yankee carpetbagger, she had lived in the south long enough to understand that Morn's accent was aristocratic. Sophie suspected her character model was what she looked like when she was younger and, if that was the case, she was a raven-haired bombshell straight from the nose art of a B-29. She had seen people whose original faces had overwritten that of their avatar, but that wasn't the case with any of them.

Morn's voice was still mostly her own, but it had lost the wear of years since the Catastrophe. It was a subtle but noticeable effect. At least some of the things about their original identity had an inertia from the other world which evaporated if no longer buttressed by physical facts. This concept was disturbing to Sophie, though she had her theories. She didn't think of men as attractive, and lesbianism seemed lacking, so that part of her mind was intact. She took her appreciation of Morn's figure as a good sign.

"I hope so." Sophie said. Her voice was cool and soft, but there was an unmistakable masculine depth.

"We had none in the guild bank?" Morn said, curious. Titan's guild bank had every item known to man and an officer like Sophie had access to most of it.

"We did, until I went to look for them. Another officer must have gotten there ahead of me." Sophie said. Her eyes dulled as if there was something she was leaving unsaid.

"They were gonna sell them? Damn, that's quick thinking. But couldn't we find out who they are by pretending to be buyers?" Soap said. He had an irrepressibly mischievous nature. Sophie rolled her spoon around the gruel once and reflected before answering. She couldn't tell them everything, but she could tell them this.

"They didn't sell them. They smashed them, in our guild room. Keep it to yourselves."

The table quieted to consider the possibility of a malicious agent in the ranks of Titan officers. It was strange that they would limit the damage to that specific thing. Someone who wanted to harm the guild as a whole could do much worse, if they had access to the officer-only bank the potions were stored in. It exonerated everyone at the table, since they weren't officers, but Sophie thought them above suspicion anyway. Except possibly Soap.

"Princess, if it's a D you need, I'll give you mine. Just don't talk. That would kill it for me." Soap offered. Sophie turned her eyes towards him, withering and icy blue.

"Far as I'm concerned you got what you deserved." Aboxorox said, "You played a girl like a fag and now you have to live like a fag. It's just desserts."

Aboxorox paused to allow for a rebuttal, but Sophie had nothing to say in her defense. She didn't have the energy to get snippy every time Rox deployed a slur, and there was a part of her that felt she had transgressed against the institution of masculinity and did deserve to suffer at least what Rox served up. She had that kind of subtle masochistic streak. There were ample opportunities before now to change her gender, but she had no intention of caving under the pressure of a little teasing. That seemed like it would be the least manliest thing of all-to simply submit.

Receiving no response, he continued: "I wonder if they serve dessert here."

"It would taste the same." Morn said, looking down at what passed for her dinner, "That's why we ordered gruel. It spares the false hope."

"Ah fuck. That's right." Aboxorox said, snapping his fingers decisively.

"I don't get why you're so keen on changing back, Princess. What's so bad about being a girl? You're even prettier than Morn and me!" Asharia said. Ash wasn't that attractive in the other world, so she had little cause to complain about her new look. She remained tangibly jealous of Sophie and Morn, since her new diminutive body was the result of a failed attempt at min-maxing and not what she would have chosen if she knew it was going to be the real thing. Wanting more in spite of what you have is only human. Except she was an elf now. Only elven? Sophie recognized her sentiments as a catty smokescreen to bait her into saying something negative about women. Then Ash would have the upper hand in the dialog. She was a thoroughbred Assassin: never up for a fair fight, always lurking in shadows, slipping away if threatened. A taxing personality if you don't know how to handle it or are caught off-guard. Sophie closed her eyes and took a deep breath, gearing up for an explanation.

"Because of my fiancee, Ash. You met her in Dixie, remember? Contrary to popular opinion, I'm not gay and neither is she. I was playing with her on a low-level alt and switched to Sophie to give her an item when the Catastrophe occurred. She was jealous of the fact that I spent more time with you guys than her. So I compromised: I told her I'd stop playing with you all so much if she and I played together. I was hoping to get her up to a place where she could start raiding with us." Sophie said.

"A party is six." Bonedog said with an air of finality, having finished making his mark on the table. Now everyone who sat there would know his name.

"I was going to kick Ash out." Sophie said dryly, giving Bonedog a sidelong glance. Everyone nodded in exaggerated mock approval of the idea, leaving Ash to fold her arms and pout.

"I'm important! You know there are monsters out there you need an Assassin for. She's not an Assassin, right?" Asharia said, her voice full of panic.

"I'm happy you found love, and that you weren't separated by the Catastrophe like so many others." Morn said.

Sophie nodded at Morn and pointed down at the table, "Even if this spells the end of our party, I need you all right now and, after everything we've been through, that should be enough."

"But you can't leave us. You were practically made to play this game. You proved that at the Castle." Asharia whined.

Sophie nodded, not one for false modesty. Evidence suggested she was a natural. She had figured out how to use the Enchanter abilities without using the floating command menu before she even realized that summoning the menu was still an option. The Castle GM event Asharia was referring to was supposed to be a one-off wave based survival mode involving defending the royal family from an invading army, but a glitch resulted in the waves arriving practically on top of each other. Sophie knew some of the class abilities were potentially game breaking and had just put the finishing touches on a Freezer build designed to exploit them. She was shocked at how easily it came to her to subdue the mounting chaos. No one had ever seen anything like it. The levels of the enemy soldiers, their classes, the times they arrived, the pure luck of it all—everything about the event conspired to create a crowd control spectacle.

It was a rare instance of a game breaking on both ends. Afterward she was assigned a title, Silver Princess, which she never lived down. Not that it was by any means a solo effort. Everyone brought the top of their game and their guild leader at the time, a gruff but effective dwarf, had a simple mantra: Stay frosty. Nothing ever phased him, and without his example and decisiveness that day and many others like it would have been lost. She learned a lot from him, foremost the importance of never showing fear or doubt in the presence of the people you lead. The world is a chaotic place and it's natural for people to want a sign that there is someone who knows more than they do, and who has a plan. Sophie never had a well of unshakable confidence like her old guild leader, but she faked it and that was enough.

The guild doctrine for a time after that was to round up a ball of enemies as big as they dared and let Sophie sort them neatly for slaughter with factory-like precision. They forgot how to pull properly. Of course, in the end, the game was brought back into balance. That all happened years ago, though Enchanters were still expected to direct the battle. Ordering people around wasn't in Sophie's nature, it was just another unintended consequence of a decision made casually, a long time ago, in ignorance. She was good at her class—one of the best—and a decent raid leader, but the office politics and grand strategy that dominated the upper levels of Titan were neither her strong suits nor the reason she played the game.

After the Catastrophe, those matters were all supercharged. She would be lying to herself if she claimed not to be thankful for the opportunity to get out of Dixie, which was full to bursting with scheming madmen. She entrusted the safety of her fiancee to a group in Titan comprised of raiders who were stuck on their low level alts. Things would have been so much simpler if Sophie were there with her, if the Catastrophe had happened even a few minutes earlier.

"Only promise me one thing." Morn said, "That after we set things right, you make an honest woman out of her. I might could perform the ceremony if you like."

Sophie nodded her assent with a smile. It was hard to say no to Morn when she was standing up for the ways of the old South in such a reasonable fashion. It would be easy to dawdle and set a date a few months off in hopes that the Catastrophe was a temporary condition, but there wasn't a truly good reason to wait, and not one worth Morn worrying over the state of her soul. She had always been impressed at how Morn stood up for what she believed so gracefully, picking the right moment to say what she felt needed to be said. Choosing that moment and the words to fit was a skill to be cultivated over a lifetime, and therefore most common in older people. Morn was a true asset, and Sophie's best friend. Not to mention a beauty, these days. Hopefully his future wife wouldn't get the wrong idea. No, she definitely would.

"You're gonna get NTR'd." Soap said to Sophie, leaning his chair back on two legs. Sophie squinted towards him as if he were speaking a different language. He was, in fact.

"What?"

"Look it up." Soap said. He raised his eyebrows up and grinned at her lasciviously. She was bewildered.

"Where? Urban dictionary dot com?" she said, shaking her head at him and closing her eyes in disgust. She hooked the tip of her her white leather boot underneath one leg of Soap's balanced chair and simply raised it up, sending him tumbling backwards ass-over-teakettle. He dusted himself off and looked around the tavern self-consciously before righting his chair and sitting back down, now with all four legs on the ground. His toothy grin was back on his face before the dust settled. Sophie admired the fact that nothing really kept him down, and that he was willing to take the thrashings that came with being a smartass with aplomb. No one took a well-deserved beatdown better than Soap.

"I miss Youtube." Asharia said after a beat, reminded of a time when slapstick was more easily gotten at. While it was true they didn't lose much sleep over the Catastrophe, it being out of their control, these sorts of admissions were common. Usually they came in waves, circling around the group as each person listed something they missed. The most common theme was food. Soap appeared ready to take up the complaint round robin when Morn leaned in to the table and began to whisper in a conspiratorial tone.

"A well-dressed Lander in a booth has been staring at us all this time." she said. As soon as the words left her mouth, everyone except Morn and Sophie began casting wildly about the inn for the mystery figure and, finding him, commenced gawking at him openly. Morn and Sophie met eyes, needing nothing else by now to commiserate with each other about the idiocy of their fellows. Predictably, the Lander leapt up and scurried away like a cockroach in the light.

"I wonder if we should chase him." Soap said. He couldn't possibly have sounded more apathetic at the prospect of chasing someone down. They had been on the road, or in the air, all day, and it felt like it was about to rain.

"Landers are going to be curious, and the first time Dog and Rox glared at me, I wanted to run away." Sophie said.

"Yeah I think that's because you're a massive faggot. You should stop pretending you like girls and just embrace your destiny as the Tranny Whore Princess of Dixie." Rox said casually. He and Bonedog were now engaged in a game of five finger fillet.

"Do you have a stake in me wanting men, Rox? Table the issue." Sophie said. Rox gave a shrug and returned to his game.

"The Continental Congress also wanted us to find out if anyone up north remembered the 7th Amendment." Morn said.

"I'm sorry, who?" Sophie said, lidding her eyes and glancing at her fingernails as haughtily as possible. She was feigning ignorance. She never responded to that name.

"The Clown Congress!" Asharia piped up. This was what most of the members of Titan called the attempt to reconstruct the republic. Titan's resources outstripped those of the next ten Dixie guilds combined. There were no major crafting guilds; there was the crafting division of Titan. Who ruled Dixie was not in question.

"I don't want to legitimize those rubes by running errands for them." Sophie said, coming off more harsh than she meant to. The Clown Congress was universally derided within Titan and it was sometimes easier to submit to the judgment of the hive than to think for yourself. In fact, it was always easier. Rain began to patter against the building, first in individual staccato and then quickly hastening into a soothing continuous tone. There was the sound of thunder in the distance, but it never grew louder with approach. The worst of it would not hit them.

"The Clown Congress might be a lot of political science students, but they're honest people who believe in our rights. We could do worse, as Americans." Morn replied gently. Sophie recognized the steel in her voice, enough to know that what lay behind it was the weight of a deeply held conviction.

"The Catastrophe happens and suddenly every asshole with a 90 next to his name thinks he is George Washington or Batman or Ghengis Khan." Aboxorox said, stabbing the knife down into the table.

"Or Tiresias." Bonedog added simply. Sophie shot him a smile.

"We shouldn't get embroiled in politics. Rox is right: we were good at a video game. It says nothing about our right to rule—not over other players, and definitely not over the People of the Land." Sophie said. Morn nodded after a period of reluctance and everyone followed suit. She brightened a moment later, but Sophie knew she had simply stowed her reservations for a more appropriate time rather than forgetting about them entirely like Ash or Soap would. Morn's words held so much weight with the others that she was careful not to turn them against Sophie in public.

"Oh, I nearly forgot. I had something made by a woodcarver. It was ready just in time for the trip north." she said, moving her hands in the air in front of her to manipulate her inventory. A board appeared in front of them. A familiar board.

"Scrabble!" yelled Ash excitedly. Morn nodded as she set out a burlap sack full of tiles for the words. Even simple facts from the other world were now hard to get at, so there were people who were engaged in recreating certain touchstones as closely as possible. The goal of the Clown Congress was to reconstruct the U.S. Constitution. It being Dixie, churches had formed and worked at remaking the Bible as well. Titan was behind many of the efforts. The Farm wing of the guild formerly devoted to training new players now took on the task of reconstructing and preserving their base of knowledge. It looked like Scrabble had been salvaged, even if the 7th Amendment might not be.

That was fine by her. Much of what was going on—politicking, wheeling and dealing, frantic hard work—was exactly the sort of thing Sophie had originally turned to Elder Tale to get away from. It wasn't as if she didn't want the Republic to be restored and their value system upheld, she just didn't think she was at all qualified or inclined to be involved in any of it, and it seemed to be going just fine without her. It was overwhelming and out of her depth. Now Elder Tale had become reality, and it was no surprise it was very similar to the old reality. A bewilderingly complex place full of agendas.

"Playing a game inside a game." Bonedog said, offering no further thoughts on the subject of recursion. Sophie shook her head negatively.

"Elder Tale is no game. We've gone professional." Sophie said, placing one of the pews in front of her. The other four split into two teams. Telepathy made it easy for the people sharing a pew to play as one.

"We should each get 100, no, 150 points up front." Sophie said, looking evenly at Morn, the equivalent of asking someone to fight you with both hands tied behind them. There was a pleading in her eyes, as if the prophet Tiresias knew that shameful handicap would still fail to carry them against someone who had the facts necessary to rebuild the game memorized offhand.

"Of course, dear." Morn replied with a sweet smile.

After being viciously manhandled by Morn in the game of Scrabble, the six of them rented three rooms on the top floor of the inn. Morn and Asharia slept in the same room, as did the men, and Sophie would sleep alone. Sophie determined they should post up a guard in light of the suspicious Lander they spotted. Aboxorox and Bonedog lost at rock-paper-scissors due to their statistically unfavorable fondness for rock and were assigned the two shifts of watch duty as a result. Shortly before dawn the following morning it was Rox who banged on Sophie's door. He nearly knocked it off its hinges with the force of the consecutive blows and Sophie jerked upright, seized by momentary terror, clutching the blanket to her chest.

"Yes?"

"Princess, there are two full squads of Lander armored cavalry out front. Unless you summoned them for a gangbang you need to put some clothes on and get down here."


	2. Chapter 1 Part 2

Chapter 1 - Part 2

Two full squads would be 24. No match for a single full party of six elite raiders. Bonedog, Ash and Morn could take them on while the rest of the party had breakfast. It's possible they didn't know, or hadn't yet learned that some adventurers are exponentially more powerful than others. Avoiding conflict could be difficult if they weren't aware of the stacked odds, since it made them unpredictable. Sophie didn't have any Lander blood on her hands, nor did any of the others. It was one of the reasons she didn't want to get involved in politics.

They would continue doing what they always did, what they were genuinely good at, and arguably what they were in the world of Elder Tale to do: fight monsters. As pathetic as it was, she was still excited about the actual expansion, getting to level 100, finding new forms of life and obliterating them for loot. In the rush of weirdness that followed the Catastrophe it was easy to forget such a minor thing, but it was what they all logged in to play.

Sophie's combat outfit, the Phantasmal-class Enchanter-robe called Linear Azure, was white and sky blue, adorned with a golden stripe down the center-line that marked her out as an officer. She joined the rest of party in the foyer where they were armed to the teeth, idling by the front entrance and obviously waiting for direction. She glanced over to the bar area and saw a Lander give them the eye as he polished a tumbler with a dry cloth. He was taking the situation fairly lightly. No one else was on the ground floor at that early hour. She turned to her party.

"We won't harm them, even if they attack us." Sophie said.

"Bullshit." Aboxorox replied, folding his arms challengingly.

"I am serious. Taking someone's entire life away to spare yourself a day's travel and a little piece of memory is vile. And you know that, you're just being a pain, you son of a bitch." Sophie said to Rox, narrowing her eyes threateningly. It seems she had him figured out on the last point, because his expression expanded into a smile, which Sophie returned.

"Should we buff up at least?" Ash said, sounding worried. She had her Sylvan Shadow shortbow out and toyed with a loose strip of leather on the wrapping of the grip nervously. The Phantasmal-grade bow granted a concealment bonus and looked like a living branch with budding twigs sprouting from its upper and lower limbs. Inside a forest she would vanish into the background. She had the hardest time adjusting to the physicality of the new combat out of all of them.

Sophie had been at a loss as to what to do with her, since she could become a liability if she never managed to find her way. The capacity of players to adjust was variable, with Sophie among the fastest and players like Ash bringing up the rear. That is, of course, among the players who were bothering trying to adjust. A solid half of the players dropped out of the combat game now that it was visceral and bloody. Of the ones who remained, very few possessed a genuine killer instinct like Rox and Dog. The brothers were obviously having the time of their lives and had the fewest complaints of anyone as a result. She could only imagine the looks on their faces if they had to deal with the red tape she'd been dealing with as an officer. The minutes from the meetings would probably involve a lot more stabbings.

"No. I don't want it to look like we are preparing to fight. I have a suspicion about what is going on. I'll go out alone first. Rox, hit me with a Barrier if they open hostilities. Dog, draw their aggro while we summon horses. If they attack the horses focus healing on them. Stay frosty." Sophie said. Her old guild leader's catchphrase never sounded like something she would say, but it had become tradition. Everyone nodded at each other, and she stepped through the door. What followed was nothing but silence. Morn exchanged confused looks with the others as the silence drew out and, just as they were going to charge out:

"You can come out." Sophie said, her voice muffled through the door.

They all streamed through the door and lined up behind Sophie, eager to see what was happening. Sophie had tilted her head back and covered her eyes like someone who wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. Before her the knights had dismounted and were arrayed in parade formation, each of them kneeling in the early morning mist, all in shining silvery plate. Their commander, a barrel-chested blonde haired man whose close-cropped beard did little to conceal his strong jawline, was off to the side in a deep bow with his plumed helmet held under his arm. The crisp military precision of the unit was a stark contrast to the raiders' haphazard arrangement and unguarded expressions.

The sun crested over the forest horizon, bathing the scene in the warm light of dawn. The inn ran up against a creek and the well-worn one lane dirt road that ran by the front was roughly parallel to the ruined I-95. They had taken to calling it "Ye Olde I-95". There was an old growth forest behind it full of suffocating kudzu engaged in a perpetual war against the tall birch trees. Sophie was by then almost certain of what was happening, since it was something she had suspected might happen. Hardly anything ever happened that she hadn't considered, since she was always being forced by her mind to lend her thoughts to myriad possible futures, usually bad. The knights remained kneeling and their commander, who was off to the side, rose from his deep bow.

"Sophie Argent, Silver Princess of the South, Heroine of the Battle of Forley Castle. I am Sir Parsanne Entalle of the Kingdom of Benelon, here to extend our protection to you as you travel through our lands, and deliver a formal invitation from the King to visit his court." their commander said. Sophie seemed to sag at his words, remaining silent in response.

['We shouldn't get embroiled in politics'!] Soap related telepathically in a ridiculous falsetto.

[I don't sound like that.] Sophie said curtly, also over their link. She turned around like a zombie and began to walk back to the door.

[Where are you going?] Morn said.

[Back to bed.] she said, opening the inn's oaken door and closing it behind her, leaving the scene without another word. Sir Parsanne looked stricken.

"I hope we haven't offended her Highness in any way." he said to Morn, who had stepped to the fore after Sophie made her graceless exit. Morn shook her head.

"She just had a bit of a fright when all y'all showed up. You can imagine how it was. She's no early bird, so she'll be much more pleasant in a couple hours after a bit of rest. You know Princesses and sleeping in go hand in glove. Y'all don't have to get your armor dirty on my account, by the by." Morn said.

"Rise, men. I apologize, in that case, for giving her cause to worry." Parsanne said gravely, placing his hand on his chest and bowing forward a touch in a show of contrition. His men bolted upright in unison, as if they were machines. Morn waved it off.

"It was just a misunderstanding. Why don't you come in for breakfast? Our treat, to show there's no hard feelings." Morn said, clasping her hands together. Parsanne strode forward and Morn offered him one of her hands, which he then kissed.

"Morn Martaros." she said. In the back row Ash had her hands glued to her flushed face practically since she spotted the array of armored knights.

[A real knight in shining armor. Go get him!] she said telepathically to Morn, excitement apparent in her voice every bit as much as it was written on her face.

[My heart belongs to God, Ash.] Morn replied matter-of-factly as she smiled serenely to Parsanne.

[Then can I have him?] Ash shot back, all of this before the knight had even risen fully from his bow.

"We will stand watch while she sleeps." Parsanne said. Aboxorox sniffed and spat on the ground.

"Better you than me," he said aloud, "That's my cue to catch up on the shuteye I missed. Stupid fucking rock-paper-scissors…"

A look of disapproval was clear on Sir Parsanne's face as he watched Bonedog and Aboxorox abscond through the door of the inn, followed soon by Soap. The warmth of the Southern sun was spreading over everything now, burning away the dawn mist and gleaming off of their silvery plate, threatening to make the day an uncomfortable one for those on the road in full plate. Morn curtseyed before excusing herself, leaving Parsanne to contend with an obviously smitten Asharia. She bounced over to him in order to introduce herself. He seemed less than interested in dealing with her, but his honor as a knight demanded he at least smile weakly and hear what she had to say.

"I'm Asharia!" she blurted out, "Everyone calls me Ash... so you can call me Ash. That's alright. I mean, you can call me whatever you want, okay?"

Asharia flustered as she extended her small hand to him and he, to her dismay, ignored it. He patted her on top of the head a few times. Parsanne did this gently enough, but to Ash each blow came down like a hammer.

"Where are your parents, little miss adventurer?" he said politely as he leaned over in the fashion of every adult who has ever been drafted into dealing with a lost child. Ash gave a shriek of dismay and wheeled around, her head hunched over and her arms swinging animatedly as she stalked angrily back into the inn. Her eyes were watery with humiliation. Parsanne stood up and looked after Asharia as she strode away. He held his chin between his plated thumb and forefinger pensively, thinking over the entire encounter. He turned towards a few nearby knights and looked at them blankly, as if asking their opinion of the entire encounter. They could only shrug.

"Ah, I remember. Adventurers walk away in the middle of conversations, usually the very moment they believe it is no longer benefitting them. It may seem rude to us, but it's always been their way." Sir Parsanne said to his men, clasping his armored fist as if he'd found the sure heart of the matter.

Ash found Bonedog and Soap setting up the Scrabble board at a table on the ground floor and stormed over to them. She pointed an accusing finger at Soap, who eased back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest smugly.

"I hate you, you asshole!" she said, "No one wants to fuck me and it's all your fault."

"Really?" Soap said dubiously, glancing upwards in recollection, "You turned down a few guys since the Catastrophe. You even PK'd one."

"Ewww. They were creeps!" Asharia said, stamping her feet. Bonedog had selected seven tiles for himself and looked up at Soap, wordlessly expressing confusion about the apparent paradox.

"She thinks anyone who's attracted to her is a pedophile." Soap said.

About an hour later and unable to go back to sleep, Sophie lay atop the bedsheets on her back, fully dressed in her sky blue and white robes with her arms loosely at her sides. She noticed the rust on the thick nails that were driven into the roughly hewn boards on the ceiling. Everything in the world of Elder Tale was ageworn, as if the world had been around for hundreds of years. The Landers she had spoken to at length all had extensive backstories. Histories, more accurately. Backstories made it sound small and artificial.

They had made it clear that it was the adventurers who were more or less NPCs to them. What was their perspective on what they had termed the Battle of Forley Castle? She didn't have the title going into the event. Was it some kind of retroactive continuity? Was there someplace, somewhere that she was a Princess of, or was it Dixie, or was it the peerage equivalent of an honorary degree? There were countless questions, but one thing was clear: it was not the case that Landers were NPCs and became real, or that the world of Elder Tale had been brought to life. What happened was that they, the adventurers, had been brought into their world.

It was a world whose circumference was half of Earth, which meant the radius was half. The relationship between the radius and volume of a sphere was cubic, so its volume was considerably less. Yet the gravity was the same. Perhaps the oceans were larger and only the landmass had been shrunk by half. It could be mostly iron on the inside. No, that couldn't be it, because the entire planet would still only be slightly larger than the outer core of true Earth.

The physics could be different, but that was a mental Rubicon she refused to cross without evidence. She turned her hand down towards the bedspread and captured the rumpled white topsheet between her fingers, feeling the soft cotton threads. They had seen fields of cotton on their way here. It was mind-bending to think that the sheets were actually woven by a Lander rather than just being a flat image created by an artist. Everything had a history and place in this world except for them. They were aliens in a variety of ways. A knock on the door interrupted her reverie.

"Come in, Morn." she said lamely, not bothering to move from her position. Using telepathy when you were in the same building had the exact feeling of a phone conversation conducted with someone in the next room. It was possible and occasionally practical, but it felt silly. Morn entered and stood at the foot of the bed, folding her hands before her and giving Sophie time to speak. She didn't, and after a lengthy pause Morn began.

"You know, we're not too far from Virginia. It's where I lived my entire life, until I moved here." Morn said amiably. Sophie couldn't help but crack a smile at how quaint she had made the Catastrophe sound, like they had packed up their things into cardboard boxes, put them in a truck, and got off on the exit to Theldesia.

"And if I know Virginia weather, it's going to be powerful hot today. The hot days always come after storms like that." Morn continued.

"I think you're right. I can feel it already. I'm going to put TARPA on making an air conditioner." Sophie said. Part of her ostensible job as an officer was to head up Titan Advanced Research Projects Agency, a formerly tongue-in-cheek division of the guild with a mandate to dissect the Half-Gaia engine's operational principles and break them. TARPA was useful after the Catastrophe since they were able to experimentally determine that the Half-Gaia engine no longer governed the world of Elder Tale. They had already found out how to make real food, but policy held that anything TARPA unearthed was classified unless released to the public by the Inner Council. Everything about TARPA-the play on DARPA, the classification thing, the dissection of the game-was always understood as an elaborate in-joke. Now it had gone serious like an aging male lead famous for comedic roles.

TARPA raids were the polar opposite of Solid Play, the byword for Titan's no-nonsense modus operandi. Solid Play was efficient, repeatable, produced results and was, above all, simple. It was also dull and methodical like actual work. Outrageous plans and individual heroics had no place there. Sophie's lack of enthusiasm for the SP doctrine was one reason she wasn't on the Inner Council. TARPA had never produced a mechanic worthy of incorporation into Solid Play, because anything useful they dug up was termed an exploit and they were rewarded with temp bans.

"An air conditioner? Gracious, Yankees are the same everywhere." Morn said, her eyes lidded puckishly. Another long silence passed between them in the stuffy, darkened room as Sophie lazed in the bed. Sophie never felt the need to force a conversation with her. Morn walked over to the shutters and threw both of them open, flooding the room with painfully bright sunlight and a rush of fresh air. Sophie winced. She bent at the waist and sat up.

"So will we be accepting their invitation? It would put us behind a day at minimum, but it might warm our relations with the Landers. At the least, it could get us in the door." Morn asked.

Sophie looked into Morn's dark eyes and reflected. A delay was what she was willing to risk earlier if it meant sparing the life of a Lander. Establishing peaceful relations with Benelon was paramount if they wanted to avoid bloodshed. True, her credentials were fake, she was not even a real woman, and her entire persona as a leader was a stage act from the beginning. But as long as it was them who invited her, if they decided she was a fraud the damage would mostly be confined to her. If she made the decision for them by declining, it might be viewed as a sleight and others could suffer. If anyone came away from the exchange feeling pathetic, it should be her.

It was possible they already knew she wasn't a noble and had an inscrutable agenda involving someone in Titan who wanted to take her down a notch. These and other low probability events mingled in her thoughts, each one worse and more terrifying than the last until finally the Landers were declaring war on Dixie because she came off as rude and couldn't figure out which fork to use for the shrimp. That would never happen. Would it?

"We accept. We'll leave in an hour. Tell Sir Parsanne and the others, then come back here." she said. Morn smiled and nodded before departing, returning in a few minutes as requested.

"Is there something you needed, dear?" Morn asked. Sophie covered her face, not believing what she was about to say. She let out a long sigh, steeling herself for it.

"I need you to kill me." Sophie said.


	3. Chapter 1 Part 3

Chapter 1 - Part 3

She draped her legs over the edge of the bed and looked directly at Morn with calm eyes, trying to make herself look more sane than she felt. One of the first things TARPA attempted to find out was whether the Catastrophe was actually a psychotic break. There was much about their situation that didn't match the progression of mental illness, especially in how complete and abrupt it was. They couldn't establish conclusively that it wasn't psychosis, but after consulting with a few philosophy and psychology majors they decided that taking this view was no different from ordinary solipsism. Many members of TARPA had formal scientific training and agreed that solipsism was a dead end, and an obnoxious one at that. Science rests on the assumption that there is one metaphysical reality. Whether that assumption is true or not is a moot point. They had no choice but to deal with the reality they were presented.

It was a nasty and popular prank to grief other players by grabbing them and claiming to be a loved one, entreating them to deny the reality of Theldesia and return to sanity. Sophie hadn't partaken in this kind of cruelty, but couldn't help but find it funny even when it ended in tears. There were players who were convinced they were deep in the grip of insanity. She empathized with them, and she felt if they empathized with her in kind they would also laugh, because they would recognize they were both in the same absurd situation, rather than being alone. Many of them had excellent reasons for wanting to return, and she could only do the best she could for them. Until then, they had to live. That was a basic principle.

"Absolutely not. You've died enough." Morn said, burying the weight of her horror in those words. Sophie had died more than any of them by an order of magnitude or even two, enough to deduce what it meant. Morn's hand flew up to clutch over her heart as if she were about to faint. After the Catastrophe the fear of death held Dixie in its grip. Adventurers huddled together in guildhalls and were now unwilling to face the monsters roaming the wilderness, or even their fellow players who had demonstrated a real flair for lawless sociopathy throughout Elder Tale's 20 year run. Something had to be done. Near the end of Day 2 TARPA had confirmed the existence of many game mechanics and the nonexistence of others in accordance with the mission they received during the Titan all-hands meeting at the end of Day 1. The only fundamental mechanic remaining to test was respawn, which they had left for last.

To their credit many of the members were willing to take a step into the great beyond, but it was Sophie who the decision rested on and she couldn't in good conscience send anyone else. Making no preparations and issuing no farewells, she stepped away from the group and ordered a sorcerer to kill her before they all had time enough to rethink it. She respawned a few minutes later at the Cathedral, lifting the dread they were beginning to feel at making such a coin toss. Sophie was right about one thing: if they didn't do it then, they never would have. Morn felt at the time that there had to be a price-not because of any training or knowledge on her part, but because of a fundamental belief that nothing comes for free. A gift like life is something that always requires sacrifice, and in this case it was their memories. That was the analog to the EXP loss that occurred on death. The cost to discover this wound up being considerable, especially for Sophie.

"I have a notion to settle, Morn, and it could help us. Don't make me do this myself. Faithful Blade is much quicker." Sophie said as she eased herself off the bed and let her arms fall to her sides. She closed her eyes and waited. Morn hadn't submitted herself for death either intentionally or on accident, and had no plans to. It was the first time Sophie had asked for Morn to do this for her. She had no doubt that Sophie would kill herself, and it would likely be a painful and drawn out affair given the low attack capability of Enchanters. If she cried out it may summon Parsanne and the entire affair would become a godawful mess.

"Goodness, but why now?" Morn said. It was clear she had relented, though a respectable woman doesn't back down from an extreme but ill-considered position in a single step. There should be an intermediate step of mild resistance. That was proper.

"Because it will be most useful now. Come on, I'm getting nervous. Are you trying to be cruel about it?" Sophie said.

"Fine. I will, just this once. I thought you would be through with throwing your soul away piecemeal once we learned the price." Morn lamented as she removed a bastard sword from her inventory. It was an artifact-class item with a single fuller running down the center of a blade with a leaf pattern inlay. It hummed with sharpness as Morn tested the weight, struck by its beauty and fine construction. It was the first time she wielded it since the Catastrophe. Supple black leather curled around the hilt and a brilliant rose-cut ruby was set into the pommel. To many warriors at level 90, the idea that a cleric with a High Healer build would possess a Starlit Autumn Wind sword was bordering on criminal. The item would have rotted if she hadn't taken it; it happened sometimes on raids that a bound item would go to someone unexpected simply because deserving recipients all had something better.

"Don't worry, I think this is the last time. And... use both hands." Sophie said, eager to get it over in one shot. She peeked open one of her eyes. While she didn't fear death, that didn't mean she didn't fear the process of dying. It was still frightening, and fairly painful when it was done poorly in spite of the apparent dampers that had been placed on their sense of pain. It was not something easily gotten over no matter how many times it happened to her.

Morn held the sword point-down with the cross formed by the guard and blade a few inches out from her chest. She closed her eyes and bowed her head until her forehead touched the ruby-hilted pommel. The blade of the sword glowed ever brighter with a white light as she activated Faithful Blade, a Cleric skill designed to deliver a devastating blow to an opponent after a long and considered charge-up time. Even a well-geared mage like Sophie would fall in one shot if she allowed a Cleric the luxury of powering up for such an extended period. Frankly the best thing for an Enchanter in solo PVP with a Cleric would be a good head start, and the skill would provide that.

The blade shone with pure continuous light, Morn opened her eyes and rotated the sword around in her grip, a quick swoop sounded out as she wound it back for the coup de grâce. Her movements felt strangely practiced and decisive. She paused for a moment to survey her target, a lovely elven enchantress who looked like she was dreading an incoming punch from an older brother. Morn's sword arced down in a brilliant wave of light and passed clean through Sophie. If not for game mechanics, it would have been a gorey bisection. Instead of a bloody mess, her health dropped to zero, her eyes lost focus, and she toppled from where she stood without a sound. Morn dropped the sword and rushed forward to catch her, laying her lifeless body down gently onto the floorboards.

She would wait a few moments and then cast Resurrection, a spell common to Clerics across many games. Morn didn't consider any of them to be immortal, so the Cathedral and resurrection magic only existed to draw their life out just long enough to arrive at their appointed hour. It was not Sophie's time, not now and definitely not by her hand. She put all of her heart's wishes into the spell's success, never taking it for granted as Sophie did, even if it was a cold and mechanical thing that couldn't hear her. Prayer seemed more relevant than ever, given the strange and dangerous world they were in. After Morn finished casting the spell, Sophie stirred. Color returned to her cheeks and she rubbed the back of her wrist against her eyes.

It was odd to see a person one moment fit for a casket and the next hopping up like a child out of bed on Christmas morning. Sophie could have simply stood and resumed her business in that way, but she had at least learned a touch of class from Morn. Having placed herself in Morn's care, casting her off like a used rag the moment she was no longer needed was gauche. Morn helped her to her feet, which was a nice feeling even if she could have done it alone. Sophie brushed her hands down the front of her robe, thankful it was only a bit rumpled and not cloven into a skirt and top by Morn's strike. That's to say nothing of what the sharp blade might have done to the rest of her if normal rules applied. She breathed deeply, trying to sense what was lost, and if it was what she intended to lose.

"I didn't feel a thing. Nice shot..." Sophie said. Morn gasped in a shocked and sudden comprehension of what Sophie had done.

"You're crazy." Morn said, her voice betraying the fact that she was impressed, like a mother divided between chastising a boy's recklessness and praising his results. Sophie couldn't help but smile at Morn's reluctant approval, since it helped mend her guilt at drafting her into assisted suicide.

Morn and Sophie joined the other four on the ground floor shortly before they were expected to leave, finding them all to be smoking cigarettes and nearing the end of a game of Scrabble. Two piles of gold coins lay off to the side, one with a E tile next to it and the other with an O. The pile of gold coins on the O was three times larger. Ash waved them over with an infectious grin. On closer examination, she wasn't smoking her cigarette. It was simply hanging on her lips. Rox and Soap had their backs to them. Morn breathed in the tobacco smoke deeply through her nose with the blissful, lingering attachment of a longtime former smoker. Their game board was packed full of four-letter words.

"Where in the world did y'all get cigarettes?" Morn said. Rox gestured over his shoulder to the innkeep, who glared at them when they looked over just as he had that morning.

"Eh, that's just his face," Rox said, anticipating Morn's reaction, "he's a real nice guy. Brought all the knights outside some sun tea, didn't even charge 'em."

"...sweet tea, Rox?" Morn said hopefully, her face alight. She didn't wait for the answer and hurried over to the counter. Sophie observed the man's severe expression melt into a welcoming smile, feeling just a bit ashamed of herself for taking him at face value. She should really know better, given her experience. The Landers she met so far had been curiously good people. She'd yet to meet a Lander who had the amount of obvious character flaws that she came to expect from her fellow players, and she wasn't sure whether this was cause to worry about the Landers or themselves. There was no shortage of people in the other world who claimed that elements of modern life made people crazy and dysfunctional, and this world was short on both modernity and dysfunction. Not that anything could be concluded from that correlation itself.

"So which one of you is winning?" Sophie said. Soap immediately perked up on hearing her voice and began turning himself around to face her.

"Hello, miss-" he started in a predatory tone. When he had turned around enough to notice who it was, his sharp intake of breath caused him to inhale his cigarette. He doubled over in a coughing fit and spat it out onto the floorboards. Bonedog removed his cigarette from his mouth in order to gape and Ash clasped her hand over her mouth, wide-eyed. Rox finally turned from his pew and gave her an incredulous look. Soap drew himself up, his eyes watery from coughing.

"What... what happened to your voice? You sound like. You sound exactly like you look." Soap managed to eke out between lingering coughs.

"I do, don't I? Which makes sense. My vocal cords are the same size as a woman's, so what would the reason why I would've still had my old voice?" Sophie said, being greeted with silence. They were probably too shocked to answer, so she continued:

"I think it was determined by the mind, not the body. Not only is Theldesia dualistic, but the mind can control the body enough to overwrite its physical reality via magic. I could test whether it was my mind, and not my body, that was determining the tone of my voice if it changed when I changed my mind. So my new voice is sort of a factory default, which is why it seems to fit the body." Sophie said, gesturing to her larynx.

"You died and forgot the sound of your voice." Bonedog said. He had a way of cutting to the heart of the matter. Sophie smiled and nodded.

"It's something I've been curious about. The catalyst was having to deal with Benelon." Sophie said, biting her upper lip and glancing off to the side.

"Woulda been pretty hard to make nice with a bunch of nobles if you sounded like a fucking pre-op." Rox said. Like his brother he could cut to the heart of things, unlike his brother he never spared any feelings in doing so.

"Wh-what about your fiancée?" Ash blubbered, taking offense for Sophie's absent fiancée by proxy. Ash intuited that this new development resulted in her being a definite third place among the group's women and assuming the role of Sophie's fiancée gave her instant authority to deal out a bit of revenge against the usurper.

"I'll repeat the process when I'm a man. It's just a voice, it's inconvenient for my voice and body not to match up when I have to live like this. I'm still the one she fell in love with." Sophie said, becoming defensive in response to Ash, implicitly giving her the right to speak for Sophie's fiancée. Allowing Ash to draw her into her emotional world was utterly the wrong tack, but Sophie didn't see it coming this time. Now Ash had found the vulnerability, cloaked herself in the appropriate disguise, and would move in for the kill. That was the personality of an Assassin: resourceful, opportunistic, deadly, and amoral. Annoying.

"I bet you won't tell her all this, just like you didn't tell her about what happened with Project Beyond, huh. You know secrets aren't healthy for a relationship." Ash said in a sing-song tone. Sophie could think of nothing to say to this letterpress invitation into a hair-pulling catfight. While Ash's motives were muddy, there were things she had concealed from her fiancée, and the rest of them as well. It was a time of secrets. Sophie suspected then that she had been spared the full bore of Ash's nature, and now with both feet in the female camp it was time for some classically girly internecine warfare. There would be more of this to come, from more women besides Ash, the longer she remained in this form. It was not an encouraging thought. She should be fucking women like Ash, not trying to dream up the perfect rumor to ruin their reputation. She couldn't and didn't want to fight Ash on her chosen field of battle.

"Ash," she said, sounding tired, "If you're going to stand in for my fiancée, then bend over the table and get ready for the good part."

"Is that some kinda threat, Prinny?" Ash said, grinning from ear to ear. That seemed to turn her around, transforming her ordinary hostility into playful hostility. The saving grace of Ash's emotional state was her ability to turn on a dime. Ash hopped up and held her waist against the edge of the table, leaning over it coquettishly as if complying with Sophie's request. Her tan stomach peeked out from between her skintight brown pants and leather carmine top. Morn stepped forward and put her hand on Ash's chest, pushing her back upright.

"Why don't we all get ready to go?" she said. Ash let out a whine, disappointed about not being able to test Sophie's limits. Sophie was thankful for the intervention, because it meant she didn't have to actually spank her. Her challenge had been too open-ended to back down from without a fresh round of pain from Ash's quarter. Whipping her ass would have been cathartic but definitely not worth the fallout. She exchanged a look with Morn that conveyed more or less everything she had thought. Sophie noticed the two piles of coins and her curiosity got the better of her.

"What are those for?" she said.

"I'm glad you asked, Princess." Soap said, "It's a bet. We can't let you in on the bet because there is a possibility it might influence the outcome."

"It's a bet about what'll happen first: goin' back to the real world or Princess getting assaulted by orcs in a sexual way. E for Earth, O for Orcs." Rox said, heedless of Soap's position. Sophie looked at him blankly before turning her attention to Soap, knowing him to be the real culprit.

"There are so many things wrong with that I don't know where to begin. Why in the world would orcs do that to me?" Sophie said after a pregnant pause.

"Because you're an elf princess, Princess. Getting ravished by orcs is your raison d'être." Soap said. It was too much a non-sequitur to respond to, so Sophie let it lie without comment.

"What about when I change back into a man? Are orcs still going to interested in me then?" Sophie said, folding her arms and leaning forward as if she had a point.

"That's not going to happen, because women never change back into men. It's a one-way trip you went on." Soap said, confident of his mastery of the relevant trope. Sophie looked dumbstruck and searched her memory for a counter-example.

"What about Ranma? Or Tootsie?" she said.

"Tootsie wasn't transformed into a woman, so it doesn't count. Ranma was still half man. That was the name of the show. You just forgot your last fraction of maleness like an old phone number. Ranma never did that, and he was more of a man than you ever were on your manliest, most flannel-wearing, most bearded day. Days which are behind if you haven't looked down lately." Soap said, taking the opportunity to bite his lower lip and nod his head as he ogled her openly, aiming to disturb her. She could get into a weird argument with him about this point, but it would be enervating and he would continue inventing new criteria. Besides, had she even seen Ranma? She couldn't remember what happened at the end, or anything besides the premise.

"Alright, finally: why would me knowing what the bet was about affect the outcome. Are you implying I would allow myself to fall to orcs in order to hand victory to one party or another?" Sophie said incredulously.

"No, I only said that so you would get indignant about that implication." Soap said. Unbelievable. Sophie glanced at the two piles. The odds were 3:1 in the orcs favor, indicating everyone at the table had bet some amount. Only one person had thought they would return to Earth first.

"Thanks, Ash." she said, assuming the only girl at the table would naturally be anti-orcish sexual violence.

"Nah, you're goin' down! Bring on the orcs!" Ash said as she slapped her hands down on the table, rattling the tiles on the Scrabble board and practically cackling. It was all in fun-their way of continuing to riff on her title and cutting her down to size-none of her friends really wanted that to happen. Except possibly Soap.

"Fine. When the orcs are carrying me off, if I have so much as a sliver of MP I'll spare it to immobilize you with Astral Hypnos." Sophie said, her eyes lidded with satisfaction. Astral Hypnos was Sophie's signature spell. Getting put to sleep by a world-class Freezer was a serious condition to find yourself in if the objective was to escape the grasp of orcs.

"No!" Ash said, horrified, "I couldn't handle it. Look at me!"

Even if it was all a gag based on the thin premise that elves and especially their princesses tend to get ravished by orcs, it was cause for consideration. Her attack power was limited and her ability to commit suicide was lower than most players. She had plenty of stamina but no overwhelming strength. It would be possible for an enemy to restrain and detain her, or to a lesser degree someone else in her party. Even Landers could pull it off under the right circumstances. Then she would be at their mercy as long as they were watchful enough to prevent Call of Home from casting. There were things in play besides their lives, like their freedom and dignity. In a way, she was glad they had this offensive exercise, since there were matters she had failed to consider about her safety.

"It's not going to happen. This world is rated T for Teen." she said, aiming to reassure herself as much as anyone else. Rox looked at Soap with regret as if Sophie had finally made the killing blow to their perverse bet. Soap thought for a moment before shooting back:

"Game experience may change during online play." he said.

"No that only means a PLAYER could ra-." Ash started before getting cut off by Sophie.

"Enough. No one is getting r... taken advantage of, by anything, in any way. Let's move." she said, turning about and stepping towards the exit.

"Before we go, there's one thing I wanted to know." Morn said. Sophie paused in her tracks.

"Forgetting something like the sound of your voice is a mite abstract as memories go, isn't it?" Morn said. Sophie wasn't supposed to tell them about this, but she was growing tired of secrets and their keeping.

"You'll have to give up something more concrete at first. It's possible to develop new abilities that didn't exist before." she said, keeping her back to them.

"You've gotten good at dying?" Morn said.

"No, I'm only just starting to good at dying." Sophie said after a little reflection.

"Goodness, when will you be a professional?"

Sophie turned around at this and held her hands palm out, looking directly at everyone. Her eyes were wide and a cryptic but sincere smile was on her face, draining what she said of any potential for humor.

"When I'm dead."

They all stared at her uneasily and with a touch of horror. Even Aboxorox. Sophie dropped the creepy act a moment later and smiled a bit more genuinely.

"Gotcha! That was for betting against my virtue. You should see the looks on your faces," Sophie said, adding, "I'm fine, and you will be too. Don't be afraid."

A few minutes later they had all saddled up in front of the inn. Rox was the last one, as usual, taking everything at his own pace. As Morn predicted, the sun beat down on them all furiously. Sophie shuddered to think of what it must be like to be sealed up in a suit of armor. It was at least a dry heat. Sir Parsanne was marked out by the helm he wore with yellow and red plumes emerging from the crown. His horse trotted in front of everyone and he opened the beaver on his helmet to speak to Sophie and everyone else.

"Stay vigilant. My lady, the road north has been overrun by a menace, and that is the reason we have been sent to ensure your safe passage." Sir Parsanne said.

"A menace." Sophie said flatly. It couldn't be.

"Yes, m'lady. Orcs!"


	4. Chapter 1 Part 4

Chapter 1 - Part 4

Sophie looked over to Ash, who had managed to mount her chocolate-colored mare and was now leaned forward against the horse's neck with a painfully bored expression on her face, her arms held limp on either side from the force of gravity. One of Ash's more annoying habits back when all of this was a game was to get distracted by her cellphone if more than thirty seconds passed without any need for input from her. Ash was the youngest of them all and didn't remember what the world was like before smartphones and social networking. What she was exhibiting were the classic symptoms of withdrawal.

It wasn't so bad on Sophie, who was just old enough to have watched the information age unfold. While she had forgotten most of her childhood, she remembered payphones and lazy, isolated afternoons with neighborhood kids. At least she felt like she remembered them. Wasn't there a creek they went to? She remembered being bored and having nothing to do for hours on end, even if the specifics were hazy. The Theldesia-preparedness crown went to Morn, who thought Tumblr meant a kind of gymnast and may not even have had electricity when she was Ash's age.

"Ash, recon the forest ahead on foot." Sophie said. Ash sat up in her saddle and gave her a pained expression.

"Are you kidding me Princess? While you're all on horseback, you want me to walk through that?" Ash said angrily, pointing over to the dense undergrowth of kudzu. Traversing a forest overrun by the Japanese weed would definitely not be easy. It would even be impossible to do that and keep pace with the horses for a non-Adventurer. Sophie couldn't tell what the reaction of Sir Parsanne and his knights was to this request or Ash's strident refusal, since their faces were all covered by their helms.

"Your subclass is Ranger, so it's your job to scout." Sophie said. Rangers were Archers with a bit of Tracker for good measure. Ranger synergized with Elven racial abilities extremely well, so it was a natural choice for Ash from a mechanics perspective.

"Gah, this sucks. I'm switching my subclass to Whore!" Ash said sourly as she dismounted her horse. There was no subclass called Whore, it was just a popular nickname for the Courtesan roleplaying subclass. Pre-Catastrophe it was a flag for ERP, and Sophie could imagine what it meant now. Ash gave her horse a sharp slap on the ass, taking a bit of her frustration out on the poor creature, and it whinnied and galloped off. Several of the knights looked at each other, their confusion with the act clear in their body language. Sophie couldn't tell if it was about how Ash had dismissed her horse, or the amount of guff a little wood elf was presuming to give a noble, or what a 'subclass' was, or why someone who looked about ten was talking about prostitution. There was confusion to go around.

[No, you won't. You're an archer-build and too much of a min-maxer to have a roleplaying subclass.] Sophie said to Ash with a confident smile, switching to Telepathy to spare the Landers their infighting. Min-maxing was the reason Ash fell for it when Soap claimed she had to literally minimize her size in order to maximize her stealth. The twist was that it probably worked in the end, since the world was no longer governed exclusively by game mechanics and small things were really easier to miss. Ash pouted at her once more before taking a running leap into a dark gap in the kudzu edifice. She all but evaporated when she met the forest threshold. They didn't even hear her land in the brush.

[They're all roleplaying subclasses now!] Ash whined over the link, now out of sight. Staircase wit was one of her charms, and her observation was true enough. Sophie rubbed the supple brown leather of the reins between her fingers and gave a nod to Parsanne. S

"Lead the way, Sir Parsanne." she said. Half of the knights went forward of them and the other half took up the rear. Parsanne never left her side, and the rest of her crew followed behind the two of them. Sophie suspected it was around 8 am. Sir Parsanne propped the visor of his helm open, meaning to speak to her.

"She's certainly a willful child." he said. Landers took the notion of nobility seriously and he probably wasn't happy about the lack of deference her party was apt to show her or himself. The adventurers on this server were mostly Americans and their opinion of the institution of monarchy hadn't changed much since the revolution. Sophie was divided on the issue. On one hand an aristocracy was just an entrenched power structure that was the result their distant relatives being especially charismatic and violent. On the other hand Benelon wasn't their country. It belonged to the Landers, and she was their guest. She wasn't going there to tell them what she thought about kings. Southerners didn't hate kudzu because it was foreign or even because it was unstoppable, they hated it because it tore down everything familiar.

The aristocracy was a legitimate institution if people believed it to be, just like any form of government. As an officer in Titan she couldn't object to rule by the strong, because on Day 4 they had proclaimed themselves to be the transitional government of Dixie. They had heard about what was happening in Big Apple and understood then that a strong central authority was preferable to a power vacuum or paper democracy. It was an absolute autocracy and their legitimacy was questioned by everyone to the point of mockery. The plan was to form a more complete government for their bizarre city-state at the beginning of July. So far the only thing agreed upon was the anthem. Dixie's Land, of course.

"She's Princess' kid cousin." Soap said. When he lied to someone who didn't know him yet he had a way of making his voice sound like that of a credible, reliable guy. When he lied to people who knew him he sounded like himself, which was the opposite of reliable. He was simply a good liar and there was no escaping it as long as you kept his company. Sophie could tell he had no endgame with this little fib. She could quash it right now if she wanted.

"Ahh," Parsanne said, taking Soap at face value, "So that's why she was so comfortable talking back. If she were my child, I would have punished her for saying something vulgar like that."

"You're completely right, I shouldn't allow it. When we get to Forley Castle why don't you take her aside and spank her. Make sure to tell her it's because she's been a bad girl and deserves to be punished. Those words exactly." Sophie said, barely managing to retain her composure. She wasn't the equal of Soap when it came to japery, but fortunately Parsanne's ability to look over at her expression and judge her tone was hindered by the helm and his trustworthy nature.

"Of course, m'lady. Will she be safe in the forest?" Parsanne said.

"Safer than we are here on the road." Sophie said. The road was wide enough for three horses to trot alongside one another with a reasonable distance between them. The left of the road was dominated by a tall, dark forest filled with climbing kudzu and to the right it fell off into a creek in a small ditch, muddy and swollen with rushing water from the recent rain. The previous day they had ridden hard and there really hadn't been any time to consider their surroundings. Having to accompany the knights slowed them down considerably. Not that a trot through the countryside was all bad. On Earth people paid good money to ride a horse through this kind of natural setting just to remind themselves of the world until yesterday.

In a few hours the savage sun would be on the west side of the sky and put them in shade on the road north. Sophie realized that she had been squinting the entire time and picked out a white, wide brimmed wizard hat from her resistance equipment set. They carried different kinds of gear for various situations. She craned her neck around to see Morn manipulating the floating command menu in front of her. A moment later a white hat with a lacy pink ribbon around it appeared on her head and she gave Sophie a wink.

Soap had donned a pair of aviator sunglasses. They were from a promotional event for an MMOFPS named Iron World that the Elder Tale developer ran. On the last day of the promotion players discovered an easter egg that the code was also redeemable in ET. There were other gag items that didn't fit the setting: a Roomba summoned pet that actually picked up dropped items, a one handed blunt weapon that looked like a metal detector, and so on. Soap had a pair of Monk-only parachute pants which she knew he would wear all the time if the stats were better. After 20 years of expansions they didn't take the world lore as seriously as they once did. The comic effect of these items had been enhanced by the Catastrophe and accompanied by a bittersweet note of nostalgia.

At least she hadn't been transported to Iron World. It wasn't a very good game, and its development was responsible for the three year lag between ET expansions. It's almost as if the devs didn't know who buttered their bread! Sophie couldn't believe she was still thinking of prosaic message board bon mots like that in their current situation. The game had transformed her into a woman. That was a hell of a bug, and she had every reason to think ill of the developers. When this was all over she was going to make such a post on the official forums. It would be a devastating book-length takedown. She deserved at least six months of free time added to her subscription.

She ran her hands over the strange curves of her body, making it look like she was smoothing out her robe. It had been alarmingly easy to keep chaste. There was no impulse to fight. The constant level of sexual desire she felt as a man was completely absent. It was like hearing a humming sound your entire adult life and then finding it suddenly silenced. If women really felt like this, she didn't understand why they ever bothered having sex. It could be an issue of mind-body dissonance, like her voice was, but she wasn't about to forget her entire identity to test that out. There were limits to responsible scientific inquiry, weren't there?

"It's a great honor to meet you." Parsanne said, shaking Sophie out of her reverie and reminding her that there was a reason these Landers were here with them.

"Were you there for the battle?" she said, hoping to get a bit more information about what was going on before they arrived in the city of Forley, Benelon's capital. Parsanne chuckled in response to this, as if it were a little joke on her part.

"I'm no ageless elf. I heard the tale when I was a child on the knee of my father. When you were spotted here I rode the horses ragged hoping to meet you." he said. Sophie was certainly proud of what she'd done in the context of some silly game, but the fact that it was a legend for children here made her uncomfortable. She wasn't going there to tear anything down-not their kings, and not their heroes either. There was nothing to do but try to live up to whatever they imagined, or at least do as little as possible to destroy it. She could open up a channel for a Titan diplomat, tell them she was going to the West, and vanish from history. She didn't like it when other people put more stock in her than she put in herself. It was nerve-wracking trying to live up to other people's expectations, especially when they were of this magnitude.

"How long ago was it?" Sophie said curiously, knowing it happened 4 years ago. Parsanne's statement made little sense.

"You would know that better than me." Parsanne said, sounding a bit nervous. Sophie suspected it was because he'd forgotten the precise date and didn't want to admit it.

"Humor an old elf." she said, smiling reassuringly and hoping it came across in her voice.

"If m'lady insists. It was around 50 years ago." Parsanne said. It was enough for Sophie to understand that something was the matter with the time scale. She would mention it to TARPA after she got a more precise data point. Looking back over her shoulder on a hunch she found Soap and Rox to be making lewd gestures to each other. They did this every time she traded more than a couple sentences with a man. Rox was miming a blowjob and Soap was inserting his index finger through a hole formed the thumb and forefinger on his other hand. They were true friends. If they weren't they would have stopped the practice after it had gotten old rather than keeping it up for over two weeks. Morn dropped back to accompany Bonedog, probably not wanting to be associated with them at that time. They rode on like this for about an hour until Ash's voice burst into her head.

[Um, uh...] Ash started over the link, in a panic, [ORCS! Lots of them, waiting in ambush.]

[Stay calm, Ash. Where?] Sophie said, her eyes darting around, looking for signs and finding none.

[All around you, like, over a hundred. I'm so sorry, I was just taking a little break!] Ash said, sounding on the verge of tears. Sophie didn't have the opportunity to think much more before hearing the blare of a war horn in the near distance. A number of dark shadows rose in the woods on either side of them. She could see the outlines of the black bows and arrows wielded by the orcish archers.

"Everyone stay together!" she yelled, realizing she was superseding Parsanne's authority, who had years of military training over her. He didn't know what she could do, though. There had to be dozens of archers, on both sides. They would loose a volley or two and let footmen close to finish off the stragglers. They had perfect surprise and it was shaping up to be bloody even if they won, with at least some of them being sent back to Dixie and an unknown number of Parsanne's men getting packed off for good. Sophie brought down Astral Chaff on the group before the first volley was loosed. Her advance warning from Ash allowed her to form a plan by then. Due to her investment in Astral boosting gear, the spell enveloped everyone and their horses in a shroud of impenetrable mist. They could still see out of it better than those on the outside could see in, thanks to the vagaries of magic.

"Willie P!" Rox yelled with a laugh, hyping himself up for the fight as he removed his spear from his back. That was supposedly slang for white phosphorous, a type of military smokescreen that he likened Astral Chaff to. A cloud of arrows arrived a few moments later, none of them as precisely aimed as they should have been. The arrows passed by them accompanied by a deadly swooping sound, one passing a few inches in front of her neck to strike Parsanne in his midsection, piercing his armor there. Sophie's horse was on the outside and several arrows tore into him, forcing her to dismount the dying creature. She heard the cries of two of the knights. She couldn't tell if they'd been struck or simply taken by surprise, and there was no time to suss that out. There was only one hope for the Landers, and that was escape. Sophie reached out into the mist with the backs of her palms held together and closed her eyes, feeling the space in front of her for the corners of a pair of double doors. The tips of her fingers caught hold of them and she threw them open. Morn saw the translucent blue gate materialize in front of Sophie as she opened its double doors, a swirling inky black vortex behind them.

"Flip Gate in a field zone?" Soap yelled with confusion, recognizing the spell as an Enchanter emergency teleport and knowing its restriction to indoor areas. Flip Gate opened a portal to the beginning of the zone.

"I'll explain once we're out of here. Parsanne, get your men through the door, we'll follow." Sophie said, clearing the area in front of the door. When she turned to see Parsanne he had already fallen from his horse, an arrow sticking from his chest. He was still moving weakly as the blood drained from the jointing in his armor.

"Rox, Four Corners. Dog, get Parsanne. Everyone out!" she said, hoping it would buy a bit of time. Rox slammed his spear's point into the ground and cast Four Corners, a long cooldown group barrier spell that amounted to a general panic button. Sophie and the others were surrounded by a multicolored barrier just in time for her to see several arrows directed at them crack against it and fall to the ground harmlessly. Sophie took the reins of Parsanne's horse, which limped along with an arrow in its hindquarter, and Dog threw Parsanne over his shoulder. Sophie was the last to emerge in front of the Inn where the gate's exit had materialized. She threw the gate's ethereal doors closed and it collapsed into a point with an otherworldly rushing sound. She turned to see Morn removing the arrow from Parsanne and preparing a healing spell. There were other injuries among the knights and their horses, but it appeared that with the exception of Parsanne only limb shots had penetrated their plate armor.

Ash stood upon a thin branch overlooking the ambush and rested one of her hands on the trunk of a mature birch tree, the other holding her shortbow. She had a clear view of the line of orcish archers to the west and the footmen behind them, and they appeared to be in the range of level 40. She could even see their commander, whose face was marked by thick stripes of ochre warpaint. Their level difference was such that she could kill one with a basic attack every time she bothered to loose an arrow. Her level of stealth advantage in this environment due to her race, class, subclass, and gear was so overwhelming they might not ever see her no matter how often she attacked. Despite her numerous advantages she was too afraid to act. She only gripped the bow tightly, thankful for its bonus to concealment.

She saw the Astral Chaff screen go up, which was a good tactic given the crossfire they were in. Sophie's Astral focus gave the screen a wide area of effect, enough to conceal them entirely and then some. The orc commander blew his war horn again, signaling the second phase of the attack. From what she could see there were about 50 footmen on this side and the other, and they each rushed forward. The archers put away their bows and drew swords, following behind to support them. There were probably just under 200 of them, evenly divided between either side of the road.

Ash had never seen this many orcs in one place or using these kinds of tactics. It was like a real war and the battles with wandering monsters they went through as practice back in Dixie hadn't prepared her for it. She hugged the bow to her chest and watched nervously as the horde screamed into the mist, their ragged wrought-iron blades wielded high. If Parsanne and his men would die just because she fell behind a bit, it would be enough to bring her to tears. The orc commander, a tall and broad shouldered grey-skinned demihuman with a pig snout and tusks, strode leisurely down to the road. He was alone and had his unguarded back to her. She nocked an arrow and let it fly almost without thinking. It whipped through the air to pierce the base of his neck, severing his spine and killing him instantly and without a sound. Ash squinted as she watched him fall limply to the ground, feeling a momentary rush from killing him without the others noticing.

She moved up and heard shouting and the clatter of crossed swords emanating from the shroud of Astral Chaff. The orcs on the fringe loitered around as the chaff dissipated, revealing the results of the battle: they had only killed two of their own in the confusion. Several of the orcs had their swords crossed with their opposite numbers from the other side of the road, likely forced to fend off their wild attacks. All of the Adventurers and all of the Landers had vanished without a trace.

[Ash, we escaped with Flip Gate. We're back at the inn.] Sophie said over the link. Flip Gate was an Enchanter spell that opened up an emergency teleport to the beginning of the zone. That must've been the inn. But wasn't it restricted to dungeons?

[Is everyone okay? Is Sir Parsanne alright?] Ash said frantically, not wanting to be the cause of anyone's harm. There was a long pause before Sophie answered.

[Sir Parsanne was killed. Ash, kill all but one and remind them the forest belongs to elves.] Sophie said coolly, sounding as if she wasn't in the mood for discussion of the order's feasibility. Ash stood on the branch and nocked another arrow, eager to take revenge and redeem herself. Killing 200 trash mobs in this situation seemed possible with her build, but the game was terrifying and real now. There were two in the road who appeared to be arguing about who should be the new commander, surrounded by a ring of lesser ranked orcs, their chests heaving like animals. She activated Rapid Shot and killed them both in quick succession, one with an arrow through the heart and the other through the head.

She cut down three full squads before Rapid Shot wore off, and every time they seemed close to rallying she felled the cleverest and the leaders. She switched to Spark Shot next and the searing lightning chained from one to another, causing them to lose cohesion. Every time one of them appeared to have an inkling where she was, she spotted it and moved after she killed him. Soon they were routed and running in all directions away from the mysterious slaughter. It seemed like the work of a vengeful archer-god, if Theldesia had an equivalent to Apollo.

She chose to pursue the groups that ran together, switching to her Crimson Gladius short sword for gleeful sport and destroying them with Sweeper as they ran. She was consistently faster than them and finally, after a half-hour, had tracked down the last lone runner, pinning him down with Shadow Bind. The creature whined and struggled mightily, clawing at the dirt to escape the pint-sized terror. Ash's form wasn't even fully visible to him until she was already at his feet. When he finally saw her he started laughing a deep belly laugh that fit his race.

"Shut up! Just tell your friends how scary it was, alright?" Ash implored desperately, her small voice not rising above the deep echo of his laughter. He laughed even harder at that. Ash balled her fists and let out a frustrated yell before striding away.

When Sophie and the others caught up to the location of the ambush an hour later it looked as if the Golden Horde had been through twice. Ash had dragged most of the bodies clear of the road but was too lazy to take them very far into the forest. She was kicking a rock around idly and turned to see them all ride up, including Sir Parsanne Entalle, who sported a hole in his armor but seemed otherwise no worse for wear. Parsanne and his men looked around at the devastation, clearly not believing the tiny creature in front of them could possibly be responsible for it.

"Parsanne is alive. What the hell, did you lie to me?" she said to Sophie, kicking the rock off to the side.

"I thought he had been killed, but Morn healed him." Sophie said, feeling guilty for manipulating her. Ash was the best choice for the job of killing a swath of low level enemies in a forest setting. There was no sense in giving anything a fair fight.

"Oh… great!" Ash said with a nod, accepting her explanation. Sophie leaned over to rub Asharia on the head with some affection.

"I knew you could do it, Ash." Sophie said, mussing Ash's blonde hair.

"It was nothing." Ash said with a blush, demuring.


	5. Chapter 2 Part 1

Chapter 2: Day 7

Part 1

_Day 7 - Nine days ago._

Eight days before she would set out on the road north, Sophie drifted awake to find herself alone in a four poster bed, laying atop the thin white cover. Half awake, her eyes searched the nightstand for an alarm clock to get a sense of the time and found nothing on the palisander table but an oil lamp with a bronze base and a red leather-bound book. It had been seven days since the Catastrophe and there was still a period in the morning when she wasn't sure what she was waking up to. Of course there was no alarm clock and no way to grasp the time outside the fact that it was uncomfortably warm and bright in the room already. Unlike most people, she never woke to the first light and the day was usually well in progress by the time she got up. She ventured it was around 10 am.

The room was cavernous and opulent in white and gold, the master bedroom of a neoclassical plantation house named Terrapin Station on the outskirts of Dixie. She had purchased it for a small fortune as a base of operations for TARPA, having always admired the structure when Elder Tale was a game. An unusual amount of thought and care had gone into its design and it was evocative of the nicer parts of the Antebellum South. The house and grounds were lovely and a place she could imagine spending a life if that became necessary.

It was accompanied by sprawling fields, now laying fallow, which she wasn't sure what to do with. She just wanted the plantation house, she didn't want to be a farmer. She leaned over and picked up one of the corners of the book on the nightstand, The Pioneer Artists, and found it to be full of prose. Elder Tale had books that were readable, and this book was not one of them. It was once a background object, a simple polygonal cube with a book texture applied to it. They'd found this out about books already, but it didn't hurt to remind oneself of the facts. She groaned and pulled a pillow over her eyes to shield herself from the daylight, awake in mind but not in body.

"Good morning, Mistress," a feminine, soft, and unfamiliar voice called out from the foot of the bed, "Would you like me to bring you breakfast, or draw a bath?"

Sophie removed the pillow from her face and looked down to find the source of the unfamiliar voice. At the foot of her bed was an elven girl in a black and white French maid uniform with wavy shoulder length copper-red hair. She was a Lander according to the metadata that floated in a green window near her head. Her pale face was freckled across the bridge of her nose and her breasts squeezed against the front of the outfit, threatening to break free as it rose and fell with her breath. She was Sophie's type to a fault, from her green eyes and red lips down to her soft features and submissive aspect. She suspected that the pointy-eared celt of a girl would have destroyed her capacity for judgment if she were still a man. But she wasn't, so she was able to think clearly: someone who knew her preferences in women had arranged this tableau, and they'd want to be here for it.

"Alright, show yourself." Sophie said, directing her comments towards the heavy wooden double doors that led into the master bedroom. The maid girl laid a hand over her heart and furrowed her brow with confusion. As expected, Soap, Aboxorox, and Bonedog shuffled out from behind the main door where they had been gathered up and listening, all looking pleased with themselves. She was about to fault them in her mind for how they spent their morning, but she realized she'd spent it asleep. It was hard to pass judgment.

"Happy birthday, Princess." Rox said. It wasn't her birthday, was it? Was her birthday now the day she created Sophie? She couldn't remember either of these dates.

"Is it really my birthday?" Sophie said earnestly, receiving a momentary look of pity from her friends. Soap stepped forward.

"What do you think of Lucia? Right up your alley if I remember, yeah?" Soap said proudly, gesturing to the girl. Lucia bowed her head and her pale skin easily flushed red, uncomfortable being the center of attention. Soap had evidently remembered the last time Sophie had bothered to outline what she liked in a woman.

"I think," Sophie said, pausing for emphasis, "That my fiancee will murder me. What's the meaning of this?"

"I don't see your fiancee anywhere..." Soap said, trailing off. Sophie's fiancee had picked up a habit of using the mornings to do a bit of leveling along with some of the other Titan members. There was no telling where she was. That was hardly license to bang the maid, even if she were physically capable of that, which she wasn't. Soap's concept of morality centered around appearances. If he had a fiancee and cheated on her and the poor girl never found out about it, to him it was the same as if it didn't happen. He operated his own private shame culture where he was the sole arbiter of what he should be ashamed of.

"It's a big estate. You'll need a maid." Bonedog said. It was true that the building TARPA now occupied would need a staff of some kind if they wanted to spend their time efficiently.

"And we wanted to find out how gay you'd become. Turns out it's pretty fucking gay." Aboxorox said. It was hard to determine what would be gayer at this juncture: desiring a woman or not desiring one. One would be gay by current standards and the other by former ones. It wasn't something she was keen to argue.

"For the love of god. You guys go find something better to do." Sophie said. Even as she shooed them off she couldn't hide a smile at the amount of thought that was displayed in this prank. Soap was the last to leave, peering over his shoulder at Lucia's behind as he did so. Once they had cleared the room Sophie turned to the girl, who curtseyed politely.

"Look, Lucy. I don't think it would be wise for you to stay here." Sophie began after a moment of awkward silence. Lucia buried her face in her small hands and looked about on the verge of tears. Her pointed ears drooped with sadness, which Sophie found to be ungodly adorable. Did her own ears do that? It seemed undignified. Even though Elder Tale was made by an American company, the expressive and horizontally oriented elf ears were straight from the East. Her directional hearing was curiously acute as a result of this design decision.

"You're rejecting me?" she said with disbelief, "Please give me a chance! If I went back my last master would thrash me within an inch of my life."

"Ah, wonderful." Sophie rasped to herself, already feeling the eyes of her fiancee burning into the back of her neck. If this girl was playing Sophie for a sucker, she was doing a good enough job of it. It might be a story Soap loaded her up with to dodge an immediate rejection, or one she made up herself. If that was the case she delivered it with utmost conviction. Sophie was sure if she pressed further she would find out the girl was caring for a sickly little sister and that their parents had been killed by orcs.

"No, no, of course not. You can stay, Lucy. A place like this would benefit from servants." Sophie said, resigned to being played.

"Oh, thank you so much. It's Lucia, but whatever Mistress prefers to call me is fine." Lucia said. She removed her hands from her face to reveal that she had actually been crying. She took out a handkerchief and daubed away her tears. Sophie took the opportunity to stare into her watery, brilliant green eyes. The girl was either telling the truth, or very dangerous. It was a point that deserved to be settled before long. Sophie felt her skin stick against the cotton pajamas she'd worn the previous night. It was humid and hot already and she'd sweat in them after the sun rose.

"You know, a bath would be nice." Sophie said. As a member of the middle class on Earth, she'd never had a servant. Getting used to this treatment seemed foolish given the likelihood they would snap back to Earth suddenly. There was no sense in growing entitled to something that you never earned in the first place. Then again, wealth on Earth often came down to various kinds of luck, and was sometimes obliterated just as quickly by chance. It was literally called a 'fortune'. Refusing to enjoy something because it was possible you might lose it was a depressing way to live, since everything enjoyable could and would be lost. Someone who followed that philosophy would never be happy by definition since happiness was a temporary affliction.

Not that Terrapin Station was her personal fortune in this world. It all belonged to Titan and the Inner Council could always replace her with someone more pliable, so she didn't even have to go back to Earth to lose it. She decided taking advantage was her right. All these mental gymnastics were to absolve her of the guilt of having and using a servant, a foreign sensation for an American, and they did the job in the end. Sophie knew in the third world servants were fairly common, since labor was cheaper. Theldesia was somewhat like a third world country with Landers forming a cheap labor pool. Sophie realized if she kept thinking about this much longer it would loop back around to being distasteful, so she did her best to cut it off while she was ahead.

Lucia held her hands over her heart and looked relieved, as if Sophie's first true request of her as a maid sealed the contract between them. She disappeared into the attached master bath, her polished black shoes echoing on the white tiles after she disappeared from view. Sophie watched her leave intently, hoping to feel that familiar twinge of desire rise up in her. She was disappointed.

For all its charms the plantation home was from another age and lacked indoor plumbing. Since they had no electricity or running water, it felt somewhat like they were all squatting on the property even though their ownership of it was confirmed via the iron laws of game mechanics. Sophie hadn't used the bath in the master bathroom and wasn't sure where one would get the water to fill it. There was no faucet, there was no drain. Some had used Undines to summon water, but that water was cold as well. She expected Lucia to come out in a moment and end her fantasy of having a morning bath drawn. Lucia stepped into the frame of the bathroom door and rested her hand on it, waving the other into the bath permissively, looking too bright and cheerful to have any bad news.

"It's ready, Mistress." Lucia said. Sophie was a bit dumbstruck at this and slid out of the bed to step towards the bathroom. Her gait was awkward even after seven days of living in this body. Neither this nor her male voice were commented on by Lucia, who simply smiled and waited for her charge to cross the room and enter the bath. She knew the Landers already had an inkling that there were Adventurers who seemed to be out of their right minds, speaking with odd voices and unable to move properly, and they attributed this to some Adventurer-only sickness. It was not too far from the truth. Given the rarity of the appearance changing potions, the number of people who were stuck in opposite gender or furry avatars vastly outnumbered the people who had been able to correct it.

Sophie crossed into the bath and rubbed her eyes groggily, finding the porcelain basin to be filled with steaming-hot water. As she wondered at this development she felt Lucia's hands on her shoulders, urging her to take a seat on a stool Lucia had placed on the ground behind her a moment earlier. There hadn't been a stool in the bath before, or anything to sit on. After she took a seat, Lucia ran a few fingers through her silver hair and made a disappointed sighing noise, the first judgment that she had rendered on Sophie's performance as a woman. There were plenty to make, and the state of her hair was as good a place as any to start. Lucia twirled around a hairbrush as if she were a gunslinger and began to tease it through the mess. Getting her hair brushed wasn't nearly as painful a process as Sophie expected it to be, like it was when she tried to do it herself. After a couple minutes it became relaxing and enjoyable. She utterly lost track of how long it went on for.

"There. It's a lovely shining silver, Mistress. I could brush it for longer, but that would only be for my own sake." Lucia said, running the backs of her fingers down Sophie's hair before placing them on her lower back. It was just the right amount of signal to let Sophie know that Lucia wanted her to stand up. The girl didn't want to issue verbal commands to her, likely not wanting to place herself above Sophie on a textual basis. When she did stand Lucia took up the stool in her hand and it simply vanished. The elven girl crossed in front of her, making the difference in their height clear: Sophie was over six feet, Lucia was a full head shorter than her, and she even felt self-conscious about how different their body types were. It never occurred to her before, but what she found interesting about Sophie in the first place was because she was regal and intimidating, not that she found her attractive. When Sophie wasn't making an effort her neutral expression appeared haughty and cold. Lucia looked warm and soft, the kind of girl she would have wanted for herself if she were still a man.

She looked down into the girl's green eyes as she thought all this, though her expression betrayed none of it. Hopefully her ears didn't either. If her ears did the same thing as Lucia's did it would explain why she kept getting destroyed at poker. Lucia brought her hands up to the top button on her pajamas, hesitant enough for Sophie to notice that she was blushing. Getting undressed and dressed by servants was the reason the buttons on women's clothing were on the opposite side from men's. Blushing at this ordinary part of her job could be another phase of Lucia's innocent-act, extended from earlier, designed to be endearing. That was the cynical take.

"Is this your first position as a maid, Lucia?" Sophie asked reassuringly as Lucia unbuttoned her top. If she were a man viewing this scene she would have imagined it to be sexually charged, but it wasn't like that. At least not on her end-Lucia's flushed cheeks could mean anything. Sexually, she felt like a burnt out light bulb; the circuit wiring was not complete.

"Yes... but don't worry, I have the class leveled up high enough to do everything useful." Lucia said as she finished unbuttoning the top. Sophie had the choice here to commiserate with her about the unfamiliar roles each of them was being forced to act out in accordance with convention. If she did that it would strengthen their personal connection, but at an expense to her authority. Establishing authority was more important than being her friend, since she was supposed to be a servant. Sophie cupped the girl's cheek and tilted Lucia's head back slightly so that she was looking up at her.

"You're doing fine." Sophie said, despite having no basis for the assessment. She noticed how pliant Lucia was being under her hand, and how her ears perked up with the compliment, and her green eyes and parted lips. Yes, definitely a sub. She should be feeling something now. It was probably for the best that she wasn't, because torrid lesbian sex had to be exactly what Soap had in mind and she wasn't planning to march to his tune. She drew her hand away from Lucia and took a few steps towards the bath, shucking off her top and stepping out of the bottoms before easing her body into the warm water.

"I'll speak to you after breakfast about your contract." Sophie said.

So the Maid subclass wasn't useless after all. That much should have been clear in a world with no vacuums, no dishwashers, no flushing toilets, no microwaves, and so on. Maybe she could convince her fiancee to take the subclass, or at least Cook. Sophie's own subclass was overridden by a title that granted no abilities. As Lucia closed the door of the bath and departed with her dirty clothes, Sophie received a telepathic call. The day was starting despite her best attempts to put it off. At least she didn't have to worry about dropping her phone in the water.

[Heya, I heard you were up. Late night?] the female voice said. It was Chandra, who Sophie knew to have been a student of Astronomy back on Earth. Chandra had taken a liking to Sophie since their first meeting when Sophie guessed what the origin of her character's name was. Chandra tended to take the TARPA mission fairly lightly, which in Sophie's view was the right way to take it. She mostly liked hearing the ideas other people came up with and being involved in their execution rather than being a prime mover. She was an L90 Foxtail Sorceress and had a laid back personality which caused people to underestimate her. Many TARPA members were pure casters, playing out their roles as intellectuals here in the game just as they did in life.

[You won't believe what I'm doing, Chandra. I'm taking a hot bath.] Sophie said, hopefully deflecting the conversation away from her lazy habits. There was a pause and she could almost feel Chandra's pang of jealousy over the link.

[No way.] she said. They had been bathing in a creek to the west. The water was crystal clear but frigid. There was no end to the complaints. Sophie winced when she realized that everyone would want a hot bath if word got out, and they only had one maid. She wanted Lucia to serve her primarily. That was selfish, but it was what she wanted. She was so keen on moving off one topic she introduced another without thinking.

[Way. However, it's a secret. I'll tell you if you tell me a secret of your own.] Sophie said. People tended to confide in Chandra, so she had a store of them at the ready. She was an easy person to talk to and information tended to flow to her like water flowing downhill. Sophie had an intimidating presence and relied on others to stay in the loop.

[You know how you're meeting with the Inner Council at 12:30? I think it's going to be about the College. They're going to offer you a seat on the Inner Council if you agree to head it up.] Chandra said. That was the rumor, but the way Chandra spoke it sounded definite and imminent. It was something to consider.

[You were going to tell me that anyway, weren't you.] Sophie said. It had to be the reason Chandra contacted her.

[Okay, yeah, but doesn't it still count?] Chandra said hopefully.

[Alright. The Maid subclass can summon enough hot water to fill a basin in a matter of moments. We'll set budget aside to hire some at today's evening meeting. It's about more than hot water, anyway. We've only been here 5 days and I'm already not happy about the hygiene situation.] Sophie said. She refused to let their cleanliness regress to 1800s standards along with their technology level.

[We must have one Maid already, right? Or you wouldn't be taking a bath.] Chandra said. Sophie liked all the people in TARPA but sometimes they were a little too smart. She sighed inwardly, preparing herself to stake out a claim that she knew might bite her on the ass with her fiancee. She was going to do it anyway.

[That one's mine. My friends got her for me as a birthday present.] Sophie said, not believing she had gone from nearly firing the girl to guarding behavior in under ten minutes. If she paid her salary instead of Titan, no one could object to a little exclusivity. She should definitely not get in the habit of referring to Lucia or any other Lander as chattel property, considering where they'd taken up residence. The irony would be crushing.

[It's your birthday?]

[No. Look, I'll send her over to you this evening as thanks for the advance notice. And hands off.] Sophie said, finally relenting. Once she'd staked out a position, she could give way. That was the main barrier to compromise here-the refusal to commit. Once committed to the fact that Lucia was her servant and not some general help, she could send her to Chandra. Rather than being selfish with a community resource she was being generous with her own. The facts didn't change, but there was always another angle to look at them from if the first wasn't kind to you. If she were Soap she wouldn't need to engage in this game of mirrors with her mind every time she had a human impulse.

[Ohhh, I bet she's cute.] Chandra said before ending the call.

Sophie sank in the water until only her nose was above it. She had to deal with the Inner Council and today's TARPA evening meeting was a pivotal one that would determine the future of the organization. She would likely need to have a well-deserved shouting match at some point with her fiancee about Lucia, so perhaps she could tuck that in between the IC meeting and the TARPA meeting. Her heart sank at the realization that her entire day would be dominated by meetings and demands she didn't want to meet. In the space of days she'd been pressed into being a Mandarin for an infant city-state scrambling for legitimacy. At least she wasn't still washing in the frigid creek. She dunked her head under the water, trying to prepare herself mentally for the day ahead.

A short while later Sophie was enduring a tasteless waffle and an apple for breakfast. Lucia had started to work on the stacks of dirty dishes without a complaint, and she appeared to be able to summon soap as well as virtually any other kind of domestic implement. Sophie wondered if there were other, Lander-specific subclasses that had similarly ordinary magical abilities that weren't part of the game design. Lucia had been humming a tune that Sophie immediately recognized as a Great Plains field zone theme from the fourth expansion. It was one of her favorites as well. She was loathe to interrupt Lucia, who was likely the only one on the plantation at this hour who wasn't goofing off, but there were matters she promised to settle before the girl did much more work for her.

"Lucia, why don't you have a seat and we can discuss your contract." Sophie said. Lucia looked a bit worried as she toweled off her hands and pulled out one of the chairs, sitting nearest Sophie and folding her hands in her lap. She bit her lips idly and looked off to the side, clearly nervous. Sophie didn't particularly like salary negotiations either, and didn't want to tip her hand as to her total ignorance of the labor market. Her thoughts once again drifted to her ears and whether they were screwing up her poker face.

"What was your salary at your last job?" Sophie said. She had no choice but to engage in the sleazy but common practice of trying to figure out how much a potential employee used to make. Lucia looked like she wasn't able to process the question.

"I've never had a wage, Mistress." Lucia said, somewhat bewildered. Sophie imagined this was the part where she would slowly remove a pair of glasses, if she were wearing one. It was time to skip to the end of this line of questioning. Sophie leaned in and spoke more quietly, hoping to take the intimidating edge off her voice. The layers of Soap's prank were beginning to unfold to her.

"Lucia, are you a slave?" Sophie said. Lucia gazed at the floor and nodded.


	6. Chapter 2 Part 2

Chapter 2 - Part 2

Morn sat on a stone bench in the shade of a bald cypress tree, intent on the book resting atop her crossed legs. She wore a frilly pastel yellow dress that came to her ankles and a bonnet rested on the bench beside her as if reserving the second seat for someone. She had been waiting to accompany Sophie to the Dryas Building, a dome-shaped structure that looked like a scaled down version of the West Virginia Capitol. Dixie was not a post-apocalyptic ruin, it was a pastiche of the Antebellum South added in the seventh expansion.

The park Morn was passing time in was laid out before the front of the steps of the Dryas Building and was full of winding paths, ponds, grassy knolls, and trees for shade. Morn had agreed to meet Sophie at a feature of the park that had come to be called the Forum. Morn could just see it on the other side of the pond: a columned marble pavilion that ringed a stone statue of an armored man on a rearing barded warhorse. She gave the Forum a close look, hoping to see Sophie, who tended to stick out in the crowd due to the fact that characters her height were almost universally male.

"Is that a Lander romance novel?" Sophie's voice called from behind, close to her left ear. Morn's hand flew to her heart as she started and clapped the book shut, turning to see Sophie directly behind the bench, leaning over to peer at Morn's book from over her shoulder. There was no telling how long she'd been there. Several paces behind her was a copper-haired elven Lander in a maid's dress. Farther in the background over the maid's shoulder Morn could see Asharia kicking a ball around with a few Lander kids in a grass-covered field. If Morn didn't already know her, she would assume her to be another one of the kids, albeit a curiously dressed one.

"Is that a parasol?" Morn said, amused to see that Sophie wielded a lacy orange and yellow umbrella.

"Nothing other than the legendary Radiant Parasol, Morn. It's an artifact fire resistance shield. Being a woman has some real downsides, but fashion isn't one of them. Also…" Sophie said, giving the parasol a twirl around its axis and swinging it down until the length of it was parallel to her waist. She drew out a brilliant cane sword concealed inside, eliciting a gasp from Lucia. Pure casters so seldom wielded short swords that most people forgot it was an option for them. Morn remembered seeing the parasol in action on raids where fire resistance was important, but never the hidden sword. It was probably too low-stat to waste another hand on. Back when it was a game, the parasol likely just had a clickable process effect that summoned the blade to your primary hand.

Sophie slid the cane sword back in the sheath formed by the parasol's fit-up before raising it up to rest on her shoulder again. She rounded the bench and extended her other hand to Morn, momentarily forgetting which sex role she was supposed to be assuming in the context of chivalry. Morn gave a smile and took her hand, rising from her seat. She looked briefly over to the maid situated a few paces behind Sophie and waiting politely to be introduced.

"Morn, this is Lucia. Soap bought her for me this morning." Sophie said, directing a hand towards Lucia. Lucia bowed to Morn politely, saying nothing. A confused look crossed Morn's face.

"Did you say 'bought'?" Morn said, folding her arms with disapproval.

"Naturally. I forgot-what does the Bible have to say about slavery, Morn?" Sophie said.

"Now honey, neither of us has time for an argument like that." Morn said. The Bible largely treated slavery as a fact of life, which it was as of its writing. Morn gave Sophie a sweet smile.

"That's a convenient position for you." Sophie said, returning Morn's passive-aggressive smile and giving her parasol another twirl. She made no motion to leave. Sophie knew vaguely that this was an embarrassing subject for Morn and most true Southerners, but she was also genuinely curious about the answer. She might have known it, once.

"Alright," Morn sighed, "Slaves and free men are equal in the eyes of God and will be equal in Heaven. Slaves should obey their masters and masters should treat their slaves well. Freeing a slave is considered an act of charity, but isn't portrayed as necessary for salvation."

"What do you think about that?" Sophie said. Morn folded her arms and looked up at a swaying branch of the cypress tree.

"All are equal in God's eyes and in his Heaven. God's will should be done on Earth as it is in Heaven; it is the duty of every Christian to bring about Heaven on Earth, and not just to wait for it. If Lucia is your slave, you should set her free, because she will be free in Heaven and so it should be here." Morn said. Sophie's face brightened from its mask of cool indifference. As arguments against slavery went it was fairly understated, but Morn had played by the rules and stuck only to what was justified in the Bible. Sophie found that satisfying about Morn, and anyone else who held themselves to an external standard. It was possible to have a discussion with them that didn't terminate in navel-gazing.

"Now tell me, slave-owning heathen, what do you have to say for yourself?" Morn asked. There was nothing insulting about Morn's description of her, since she was clearly both of those things.

"I don't believe in God, but I respect a considered position." Sophie said with a resigned sigh, as if she were giving ground, before turning to Lucia. Lucia was standing in the sun in spite of the fact that the shade was only one or two steps forward. Sophie imagined this represented some ideal distance a servant should keep from her master unless otherwise necessary. Either that or the girl was daft.

"Lucia, I'm setting you free." Sophie said, looking into her eyes, expressionless. It was hard to for Sophie to feel particularly good about doing this, since anyone in her position would have done the same. She was hardly to be commended for doing exactly what every one of her peers expected her to do. In a fit of pointless contrarianism she considered embracing slave ownership. Not seriously, but the thought occurred to her and lingered long enough for her to feel slimy about it. She was happy for the girl, even if not particularly proud of herself, and it was reason enough to smile at Lucia's reaction.

"Really?" Lucia said, balling her fists hesitantly with a measure of hope. Sophie nodded and removed a bag of gold from her inventory, which she'd estimated should be enough for a Lander to survive for a month. Traditionally, manumitted slaves had been given greater severance packages than month's living expenses, but the girl had only been in her service for two hours. She held out the bag to Lucia and the elven girl stepped over and took it deftly by its purse-strings, as if nervous it would be snatched away and the scene would end in a cruel twist.

"That should be enough for you to go wherever you like." Sophie said, clasping the starry-eyed girl by the shoulders, not wanting to seem overly cold in what was probably an important moment for her. Lucia seemed dumbstruck, and her expression reminded Sophie of the expression on the face of every Adventurer on Day 1.

"Mistress, does that mean you don't want me to work for you?" Lucia said with a bittersweet note in her voice.

"No, I'd like to be the first to offer you a real job. Spend the afternoon in Dixie as a free woman and come back to Terrapin in the evening if you're interested." Sophie said. The girl deserved to enjoy freedom for a few hours before tackling the mess that waited at Terrapin, if that's what she even wanted. Sophie considered trying to roll over her slavery into employment in a single swipe, but decided that would be denying her will. If Lucia came to her of her own volition, she would take more ownership of the decision and be a better employee as a result. Also, it would give her time to research what she should be paying her.

[Will she be safe alone in Dixie?] Morn said over their link. By Day 7 Dixie was the among the best off of player cities in terms of security, thanks to its strong pre-existing authority reigning in the worst abuses. The situation still wasn't stellar, and was probably worse still for Landers. Sophie looked over her shoulder to Morn and flitted her eyes to Asharia, who was doing a rather clumsy handstand alongside one of the kids in the distance. They were all getting used to their bodies, still.

[I assigned Ash to tail Lucia during the afternoon. She should be fine.] Sophie said. Titan's security solution for the city so far was in its nascent stages and guards were fairly thin on the ground. Players didn't want to do grunt work. It was literal grunt work. Getting a civilization running without the usual range of carrots and sticks was going to be a trick. Fortunately it wasn't her problem, and she wasn't about to let it become her problem. Not any more than it already was. Sophie nodded to Morn and the two of them began walking towards the Forum. After a few paces she realized Lucia was still following them at a pace.

"Lucia, remember?" Sophie said, raising her eyebrows delicately at Lucia. Lucia put a hand on her chest and let out a soft gasp.

"Of course, Mis… Miss Sophie." Lucia said, her cheeks flushing with embarrassment as she gave a quick curtsey before setting off on the path in the opposite direction. Sophie had a wicked thought of what would happen if she called the girl back right now and told her it was all a lie. It was easily the worst thought she had that day, more nakedly malicious than the notion of accepting slave ownership. Accepting slavery was a passive evil, nurturing a hope and crushing it was downright villainous.

"Lucia." Sophie called out to the departing girl, lidding her eyes.

"Y-yes?" Lucia said, stopping on a dime and spinning around, her hands clasped with terror.

"I'll see you this evening. Enjoy your day." Sophie said. Lucia nodded rapidly, flustered, and turned back around to depart. Her step was a little quicker than before.

"My, you have a dangerous look in your eye." Morn said, her brows knitted together. Sophie idly rubbed the handle of the parasol.

"Morn, I would ruin that girl three or four times a night." Sophie said after the departing Lucia. She didn't feel anything at the moment, but she knew this was true from the bottom of her masculine heart.

"Oh, how awful. Are you sure taking her in as help is wise?" Morn said with concern. Sophie knew Morn couldn't possibly disapprove of her sentiments more, but part of having a best friend was sharing that sort of thing with them and enduring their judgment. In Sophie's mind it constituted the difference between a friend and a best friend, and it should be a mutually held and singular position. It was a form of love.

"Not at all. But at the moment it isn't an issue, and it wouldn't be right to cast her out onto the streets when it isn't safe." Sophie said. Morn clucked her tongue and gave Sophie a disappointed sigh.

"Did you say something? I confess it was drowned out a curious whining sound." Morn said, folding her arms and looking deeply unimpressed.

"Fine, Morn. I like looking at her. She's nice. I might be unable to stop myself from having sex with her if it becomes an option. I still love my fiancee." Sophie said. That was all true. Morn seemed to lighten a bit, possibly because Sophie had at least come clean about what she thought. To herself, as well. She couldn't help but believe that her thoughts about Lucia were at least in part the man she once was rattling at his cage, begging to be heard. If she ignored him, would he stop?

"In that case, it's a kindness that you've been removed from the game. I'll arrange for Soap to take care of Miss Lucia's needs in your absence…" Morn said.

"You know, Project Torture is in need of new test subjects. We've had promising results with waterboarding." Sophie said. There was no such thing as Project Torture. Yet.

"Have you tried a guilty conscience?" Morn said. Sophie breathed in sharply through her nose, rendered momentarily speechless by the elegance of the comeback. She raised her eyebrows and gave Morn a nod.

"You win this time, Martaros." Sophie said. The day was still early and already she'd been outmaneuvered twice. Three times, if Lucia turned out to be playing her. Four times, if Soap tricking her into becoming a slave holder counted. Maybe she was just getting them out of the way in time for her more important confrontations later on. That was just the Gambler's Fallacy. Bad luck now does not mean good luck later, or vise versa. Sophie began to walk towards the bustling marble-columned pavilion called the Forum and Morn followed.

The first thing she spotted when she entered the shade of the vaulted roof was a series of corkboards players had put up in order to post messages. Most of them revolved around venting about PKs and other poor behavior on the part of their fellow Adventurers. Some contained useful advice while others were attempts to trick people, and it was impossible to tell the two apart. Some posts were simply indecipherable shit. The ways in which the Forum reflected the unofficial Dixie internet forum were intentional; There were 'threads' which were sheets of paper with a series of responses to a topic.

Some of the responses had hand-drawn portraits on the left hand side and timestamps, postcounts, usernames, and signatures, depending on the level of dedication of the user to the joke. One post had a word crossed out and replaced, and they then clarified the bottom that it had been edited. Some threads were quite long and had multiple physical pages of back-and-forth responses. It was an effort on the part of Adventurers to preserve some of their pre-Catastrophe culture. The culture wasn't much, but after all—it was theirs. The Forum was heartwarming to Sophie, even if the content was more or less the same as it ever was. As Sophie was penning a response to a thread about Aboxorox and Bonedog's griefing antics, Morn retrieved one of the notes from the wall and showed it to her.

"Titan-ick'" Sophie said, reading the words scrawled on the sheaf of yellowed paper. The epithet was years old, and seeing it again in this setting made her nostalgic. Complaining about Titan was a solid 15% of the traffic on the Dixie boards, pre- and post-Catastrophe. Frankly they were no worse behaved than any other guild, they just had a lot of people and those people were representative of humanity. So on any given day, a Titan member was probably misbehaving, but so were a bunch of other people in random guilds or who were guildless. There was an impression among the statistically ignorant that Titan was the source of all evil on Dixie, and possibly even the world at large. "They're just venting, Morn. Like they always have."

"So you say, but have you seen this? It could become an issue." Morn said, gesturing vaguely to the board in front of her with her palm. Morn didn't visit the unofficial Dixie ET forum prior to the Catastrophe, so all of this vitriol was new to her.

"'its titans fault my ice cream scoop fell off my waffle cone'" Sophie said, squinting as she struggled to read the chicken scratch handwriting on one of the posts. Complaints about Titan were so ubiquitous that they inspired parodies. At least, she hoped it was a parody. They really should set up a dedicated containment corkboard for Titan-related issues so the other boards wouldn't be flooded by them.

"No, silly. The one next to it." Morn said, leaning over to take the flier down and hand it to Sophie.

It was a recruitment notice for a guild called Olympus. The Titans were Greek deities the Olympians displaced in a war, the Titanomachy. As names went it was adversarial at best. Sophie placed the flier back up along with the others, not wanting anyone watching to feel she was threatened enough by it to steal it or throw it away. Sophie looked over to Morn, who was looking in the direction of the message boards but not particularly focusing on them. Sophie knew this because she looked far too serious to be contemplating a recruiting notice for a foxtail-only guild named Touch Fluffy Tail.

"Princess, have you read Homer?" Morn asked.

"Not in ages. Maybe the Landers have an equivalent." Sophie said. Could that possibly be true? Could the Landers have created works of art on that level? She'd seen Lander books laying about here and there, but hadn't had the chance to ask any of them about the classics. Most of the Landers they were interacting with in Dixie didn't appear to even be literate.

"There's nothing particularly noble about the deathless gods. Without suffering and sacrifice, they are trivial and petty. They live but not with the depth of a mortal." Morn said.

"But you don't think we're immortal." Sophie said.

"We aren't. We only die in pieces." Morn said. Day 4 saw the end of Project Beyond, by which time they had concluded the effects of death.

"I'm still very alive, Morn, and the same as I ever was." Sophie said. She wasn't committed to defending this point. A search of her recent memory did turn up things she would have done differently, but not worryingly so. Even if the underpinnings of a memory were gone, the habits it produced weren't. That was how it was possible to train animals with little functional memory. Sophie's identity seemed more or less intact in spite of the damage.

"What's your real name?" Morn said. Sophie's heart picked up.

"What's in a name?" Sophie said idly and began to walk towards a wooden table adorned with stacks of vellum paper with a couple members of Titan seated behind it. They were both around level 80 according to their metadata. Not exactly newbies, but Sophie didn't know them. At least, she hoped she didn't know them. Titan's roster was gigantic and there was no one who knew everyone. One was a black-and-silver robed dwarven man with a braided brown beard and the other was a Werecat girl with a sandy complexion and brown hair. She was dressed in what could only be described as a black plate combat bikini.

"What are you all up to?" Sophie said. They looked like they had been there a while and were surrounded by paperwork. Both scribes, probably, which is what landed them here instead of leveling.

"What it is. We're taking a census on who people were before the Catastrophe, in case there are people with useful skills. Plumbers, engineers, scientists, therapists. Y'know, anyone who might be able to pull us out of the dark ages in case we're stuck here." The dwarf said. It was true, there was a pressing need for therapists.

"Aren't you a scientist, Princess?" Morn said, turning her head to Sophie.

"No, I roleplayed being a scientist in a four year long LARP called college." Sophie said.

"Oh, you're Princess! I was told if you came by we wanted these forms from all the members of TARPA." He said. Sophie curled her lip up with a twinge of disgust. There were people in TARPA who had useful skills vis a vis the rebuilding of the old world, but that wasn't what Sophie felt they should be doing right now. Headhunters would have to look elsewhere.

"One of you is a scribe, right? Could you take a memo to your C.O.: 'Go to hell. Sincerely, Princess.' I'll sign it." Sophie said. The sandy Werecat girl gave a fangy grin and raised a finger as if to claim ownership of this task. She leaned over a piece of yellowed vellum wielding a nib pen as surely as any blade.

"Is calligraphy a scribe skill?" Sophie said as it was turned to her for signature, finding the elegance of the script juxtaposing such a curt note humorous. Sophie wasn't a scribe, but she had learned how to use nib pens as a child. Glancing at the stack, she could see the embarrassing results of other people who were obviously attempting to use one for the first time. There was a lot of adjusting to do. She took relative pride in retaining the ability to write in decent cursive despite the existence of keyboards, but her signature still came off as mighty basic in light of what was above it.

"I could do it in real life, so I can do it here." The Werecat girl said. It was likely that she could parlay it into a genuine Overskill with unique magical effects, but that was still classified information. The Inner Council hadn't yet decided how best to exploit the most important discovery they'd made. Knowing them they might just sit on it until someone else discovered it. Sophie was used to having their various findings come to nothing, only to be exploited by less scrupulous people.

"I'm looking forward to this glorious communist utopia Titan is planning on running. Do svidanya comrades." Sophie said dismissively. She regretted coming off as so critical of Titan efforts when it was only Day 7. At least they were doing something. People with valuable skills might start forgetting them if they lay unused. Sophie wanted to walk away and have the last biting word, but a lingering attachment to the concept of civilization and order and the realization that she behaved like an ass in the face of a reasonable request gave her pause. She covered her eyes and took a breath.

"I'm sorry," Sophie said, "You guys are doing something important and I crawled out of bed an hour ago. I don't know what got into me." They were momentarily taken aback by Sophie's apology and appeared to appreciate it. The dwarf nodded with understanding.

"I get it. It's your first 'that time of the month'." He said, sharing a smile with his Werecat partner. Morn covered her mouth with amusement as a blushing Sophie took a small stack of the forms. They disappeared into her inventory. She and Morn left the Forum and began to walk along the cobblestone path towards the Dryas Building. Morn was unusually pleased.

"It's not my time of the month." Sophie said, probing to see if Morn was still stuck on that. It would be out of character for her. Rox and Soap would enjoy it for weeks, and possibly years. They'd already made menstrual cycle jabs are her expense, but if it came from a stranger they would be over the moon.

"How would you know? It happens beforehand. Unless you've already—" Morn said, eliciting a cough from Sophie which interrupted her.

"What is it really?" Sophie said.

"Sophie, you have a good heart. Don't ever forget it."


	7. Chapter 2 Part 3

Chapter 2 - Part 3

Sophie and Morn walked together along the cobblestone path that wound through the city park in the middle of Dixie. Squirrels darted to and fro, looking more at play than work. Morn tugged on the sleeve of Sophie's robe discreetly and pointed out a couple laying together on the green grass under the shade of a cypress. Sophie couldn't help but crack a smile when their quiet face-to-face conversation gave way to a kiss. Morn laid both hands over her heart and made a contented sound. The Catastrophe had separated people from their loved ones, it was true—but it had also brought others together. People who had talked over the game for years and even fell in love in the game were now free to act out their desires. It was hardly Catastrophic for them.

"Oh, youth." Morn sighed.

"Morn, you are, in fact, young again." Sophie said.

"Not at all dear. I'm an elf; I've still every one of my years." Morn said, correcting her with a wink.

"I'm just saying you'd have no shortage of takers for a spring fling, if that's what you wanted." Sophie said. Morn shook her head gently.

"My husband waits for me in Heaven, and I will wait for him here."

"He must have been something else." Sophie said, causing Morn to smile in recollection. Morn had started playing over 8 years ago, after he had passed away, and her love for the departed had never wavered.

"He wasn't extraordinary, but we belonged to each other and it will be that way forever." Morn said.

"How do you know this isn't Heaven, Morn?" Sophie said. There were elements of Theldesia that were heavenly, like the fact they were all good looking and tireless, and food and shelter were cheap. In other senses it was fairly shabby, as people were still abusing each other and the place was overrun by monsters.

"Because you're here, dearie." Morn replied with a hint of of mischief in her voice. Good heart or no, Sophie certainly wouldn't be making the Heaven cut. What Theldesia really resembled was more akin to Valhalla, since what the Adventurers were promised here was oddly reminiscent of what warriors who died gloriously would receive in Norse mythology: endless battle, until Ragnarok came.

The pair crossed out of the park and onto the red brick road that ran in front of the Dryas Building. Rox and Dog were seated on the granite steps leading up to the building entrance, waiting for the two of them, both dressed for battle. Rox was reading a book and Dog was picking at his teeth with an obsidian dirk. She didn't recall asking them to meet her there. The sun's rays sank into the baked clay of the bricks and the plaza radiated the heat back onto Sophie, defeating her Parasol via indirect attack. The air was still and thick with humidity and the scent of horse manure. Horses made all the roads stink. Heaven had to be some measure of bad, since human experiences were defined in part by their contrasts. If they never suffered, how would they ever know they were happy? As far as Sophie was concerned, the entire point of camping in the woods was coming back home after.

"What are you guys doing here?" Sophie said casually.

"Griefing." Dog said with a sniff, putting away his knife and drawing himself up to his full height. He was only a centimeter or two taller than Sophie, but he was twice as wide and two times as heavy at least. Rox snapped the book shut and tossed it haphazardly into the shrubbery to the left of the building stairs. They said nothing else and simply waited. She wasn't one to beg for answers and decided it was time to move on.

"Carry on." Sophie said, walking up the first step. Dog stepped into her path, preventing her from going up. Sophie paused and sagged with understanding.

"I'm the one you're griefing?" She said incredulously.

"Hey, sauce for the goose. Didya see the post about us on the forum?" Rox said, folding his arms. When Morn tried to go up the steps, he stood in her way as well.

"I told you to grief Titan members in the city in the interests of science. We need to know what's permissible. Don't act like you didn't enjoy yourselves." Sophie said, taking a few steps to the side and trying to go around Bonedog. He just shifted his body until he was blocking her again.

"We thought we'd demonstrate." Dog said. Sophie tried to push him out of the way, but found herself utterly unable to budge him at all. She did this for upwards of two minutes and in every possible position, not really having a working plan so much as hoping they would just take pity on her and stop. Dog reached out an open palm and placed it on her chest, gently pushing her back at a steady yet unrelenting pace until she was on the first step again. From thumb to forefinger, his open hand was nearly as far across as her entire upper body. He then grasped her by her upper arms and lifted her up high and put her on the step above him, as if she were made of feathers.

Back when it was a game you could clip through people who were blocking you, to a degree. If enough characters gathered in a place to block access you could summon a GM and they would be punished. They couldn't manhandle you without issuing a proper attack. Nothing that had been done to her was an 'attack' by the game definition, even though they could control her freedom of movement. It seemed that the only thing that would summon the guards were pre-existing mechanics, so any new abuses that arose as a result of the Catastrophe were not covered.

"How d'ya like it, Princess. Nothing like a little simple assault to get the blood pumping. We spent a solid hour yesterday at Faulkner Bridge picking people up and tossing them into the river. Most people were too shocked to do anything." Rox said. It was true that she was too surprised to think straight.

"An hour? My word, you only needed to do it once." Morn said.

"Had to be rigorous about it. For science." Bonedog said. The brothers nodded at each other.

"We should have expected this. The guards are just a game mechanic, not a proper system of law and order." Sophie said, hoping not to let on that she was a bit rattled by the experience of being rendered helpless.

"So what defines who is stronger than someone else?" Morn said, curious to see if it matched her expectations.

"Size and class." Bonedog said.

"That's not kind to female characters or pure casters, is it." Sophie noted. She was both of those things. Rox and Dog shrugged. It wasn't as if it was their decision, it was simply an issue of musculature, weight, and passive abilities. "So are you two finished with this project? I can clear your names with a memo if you are, but you'll have to stop messing with people."

The boys considered, giving each other a look as they weighed their options.

"Eh, we should be leveling, not dicking around here. I'm sick of getting jailed. We're done." Rox said after a fashion. The two of them looked like they were fixing to leave.

"Rox, what's the deal with my ears? Are they, you know… expressive?" Sophie said. Elf ears did move around in the game if you used the proper emote. Rox and Dog shared a deep and long laugh which caused Sophie to immediately understand this was the culmination of an in-joke between them.

"Prinny, you look like a kicked puppy." Rox said as he and his brother set off for the killing fields.

"So much for poker." Sophie muttered after them. Morn retrieved the book that Rox had tossed into the bush before joining Sophie on the stone steps. She brushed the leaves and dirt off of the cover and made a deep sigh before placing it into her bag.

"At least they're on our side." Morn said as she watched the departing pair. Sophie nodded at her vaguely and they ascended the steps to a pair of double doors leading into the Dryas Building, which were flanked on either side by two smaller side doors. There were a pair of Level 30 Lander mercenaries in battered but functional gray plate armor positioned on both sides of the main door, halberds at the ready. As Sophie approached the door the halberds came down in front of it in an X pattern, denying her entry.

"Halt, ma'am. State your business." The one on the right called out to her. Not missing a beat, Sophie veered right and went in one of the two unguarded side doors without a word to either of them. Neither of them gave pursuit, perhaps not eager to get into a confrontation with a recalcitrant Level 90 Adventurer, even an Enchanter. She entered the marble-floored rotunda with its high domed ceiling followed by Morn, whose three-inch heels clapped against the floor and echoed in the chamber. Sophie hadn't noticed Morn was wearing heels; a lot of gear for players placed aesthetic considerations over all else, especially for female characters. It couldn't have been pleasant on the cobblestone.

Lining the rotunda were wooden benches with Adventurers engaged in hushed conversations seated on them and in the middle a large circular desk manned by an olive-complected Wolfhair girl. She was Aurele, the girlfriend of one of the Inner Council members and a L90 Druid. Her personal connection had "earned" her some of the best gear in the game even though she was a poor player who tended to abandon raids if they ran long or were dogged by failure. If she already had all the items she wanted from a zone, she wouldn't go on raids to it. She had three Phantasmal-class items. The Dryas Building was probably the safest place for her, since every Druid in Titan wanted to set her on fire. Her feet were up on the table and she made no motion to take them down when Sophie walked up.

"Hi Princess." She said, smiling at Sophie like a shark.

"Aurele, those two Landers out front shouldn't be attempting to deny people entry to the building. This is a public space and putting Landers into situations where they could come into conflict with Adventurers isn't wise." Sophie said. For the sake of the Landers she tried to come off as friendly as possible in the hope something would be done about it.

"Okay," Aurele said, not moving from her casual position, "I'll look into it."

"I have a meeting with the Council in a few minutes." Sophie said, suspecting the girl had already by then discarded her request regarding the door guards. She paused at the desk and waited for a bit of guidance—where to go, if they were ready for her, if there was a sign-in procedure. None of this was forthcoming. Aurele looked at her dumbly as if expecting her to simply walk away. Sophie realized she was getting on edge and letting her pre-existing negative opinion of Aurele get the best of her. It was only Day 7. No one knew what to do, even if some people were more clueless than others.

"Where is it?" Sophie said, hoping she wasn't sounding snippy. Aurele lifted a finger and directed it towards down the hall, pointing to a pair of huge double doors at the west end of the building.

"Thank you, Aurele. I'll see you around." Sophie said. It was unfortunately true. If Aurele was the Council secretary, then they would be seeing a lot more of each other. Sophie winced inwardly. Things became strange when she pulled open one of the the heavy double doors leading into the main chamber in the west wing of the building, where Aurele had told her the council would be waiting. When Elder Tale was a game the room was a legislative assembly hall, wood-paneled and brightly illuminated with a skylight and oil lamps. There was a red-carpeted main aisle with arcuit benches on either side leading down to a rostrum with a long table on it. That was what Sophie recalled, at least, because the room was now totally dark.

"Are we in the wrong place?" Morn said.

"I wouldn't be surprised." Sophie said, knowing that it was Aurele who directed them here. Both of them turned to leave when they were interrupted by a shout from somewhere in the chamber.

"Wait! We're here. Hold on a moment." A male voice called out from the inky black. Sophie's ears, much more sensitive than when she was human, could hear whispered squabbling in the distance. It settled and a light came up on the opposite end of the room, illuminating Cronus, the leader of Titan, as if he were about to tell a ghost story. He was a black haired Half-Alv sorcerer with a permanent five o'clock shadow, now seated in the raised portion at the center of the long table near the rear wall of the chamber. Residual light from the lamp, which had to be in his lap, leaked out and illuminated the dark forms of the other members of the Inner Council. Cronus cleared his throat.

"You may approach the Council." He said calmly.

"…what?" Sophie called out. Thanks to her directional antenna ears she had heard him fairly clearly, but she didn't want him to know that.

"I said 'You may approach the Council!'" Cronus yelled across the room.

"How? I can't see the stairs or the aisle. You turned off all the lights and blacked out the skylight." Sophie yelled back. Another light went up, illuminating a second member of the council. He was Carrick, a Swashbuckler in fine gold and white leather armor with a glorious silvery beard, the head of the Production division. He snapped his fingers.

"That's what we were forgetting. I knew we were forgetting something. We need running lights, like in a theater." Carrick said. Cronus, who was the only other one Sophie could see, nodded his head and tapped on his cheek. Morn cast Bug Light, providing enough illumination for her and Sophie to walk down the aisle as Cronus and Carrick discussed lighting solutions. Sophie felt she had a responsibility to nip this charade in the bud, or get kicked out trying.

"I know what will brighten this place up. A skylight, like it used to have. Morn, would you make it rain?" Sophie said, pointing upwards and unfolding her Radiant Parasol.

"With pleasure." Morn said, casting the destructive Holy Light spell upwards towards the old skylight, which had been painted over black. The blinding ray emerged from the palm of her hand and illuminated the chamber like a flash of lightning. It burst through the glass of the skylight with a terrible noise, shattering it everywhere and sending thousands of painted shards to rain down on everyone and everything.

Sophie pulled Morn against her for protection underneath her umbrella, even though it wasn't strictly necessary. The shards caused some slight damage to the council members, but nothing worth getting angry over. Destructible environments were not part of Elder Tale and were never included in strategy, but it looked like things were different now. Once the glass had settled and everyone finished shielding themselves, they looked up to see the room bathed in the warm light of the noon sun directly overhead. Sophie collapsed the Parasol and placed it tip down in front of her as Morn brushed herself off.

"What the fuck Princess, it was just a bit of fun. You know people think that's how we do business, so we thought we'd play it up as a joke." Cronus said, picking a piece of blackened glass out of his hair.

"It was a bad joke. Playing into negative stereotypes is the last thing we need next to the temptation of succumbing to them." Sophie said to grumbling on the part of Carrick and Cronus. The other two council members were more stoic and remained silent throughout.

"We put a lot of work into that." Carrick said sourly.

"Carrick, that's the most depressing thing I've heard all day." Sophie replied. She looked at the other two members of the Council. There was Tariq, a Guardian who headed up the Raiding division and looked like a Saudi princeling, and Adaliah, a blonde elf Cleric who was in charge of the Farm division. The Farm division recruited and trained new players to funnel them into careers in raiding or production. Tariq had a neutral expression and Adaliah a cryptic smile, and neither of these meant anything. Sophie knew they were the dangerous ones, smarter and more ambitious than Carrick or Cronus. They were this way even before the Catastrophe, when it was just a game.

"It was fun while it lasted." Cronus said finally, seeming to abandon the idea of getting angry with Sophie. Titan had grown to the size it did because Cronus' genius lay in delegation, the ability to find underlings who were capable of accomplishing the tasks he wanted of them without much micromanagement, which he hated with a passion. What he wanted out of Sophie, besides her competence as a leader and player, was the truth. So she gave it to him, and occasionally he got a few cuts for the trouble. That was the implicit nature of their relationship, and it placed Sophie firmly in the status of Council outsider. At least, that's how it had been.

"So why don't we get down to business?" Sophie said, even though everyone knew what was going to happen, and everyone knew everyone else knew. But did everyone already know everything? Sophie hated politics.

"Sophie, we've decided to form a College as a fourth division of Titan and nominate you to manage it. TARPA's research mission would be incorporated into it and expanded greatly." Cronus said, cutting right to the chase. Sophie didn't want this in the slightest, but also didn't want TARPA's independence to be destroyed or its mission compromised. So she made a deal with the devil.

"Cronus, thank you for the offer, but I think Adaliah has more experience with the process of running a school. I think the Farm division should become the College, and instruction in Adventuring become only a part of the curriculum." Sophie said, as if reading from a script.

"So you'd rather work for Adaliah?" Carrick said, dubious.

"On the contrary, I wouldn't want them. TARPA's mission is incompatible with a College. It isn't simply a traditional research arm." Adaliah said, causing Sophie immense relief. She picked up her end of the bargain. Sophie supported Adaliah's bid, Adaliah supported TARPA's independence. That was the deal.

"She is right. TARPA's mandate will remain the same as it always has, which is to break the game in interesting ways. It is more relevant than ever and folding us in with people who are trying to do traditional research in an academic environment would only water it down." Sophie said. By then the nature of the double team was clear to the other members of the Council, and it was up to Cronus to accept it or not.

"That's too bad, Princess. Adaliah, you'll get your wish." Cronus said. Adaliah's smile broadened.

"Miss Martaros?" Adaliah began, "I've been told you have the Bible mostly memorized and have a Master's in Theology."

"Not all of it word for word, but yes, I would say so. I do hold that degree." Morn said. Sophie's heart sank. Peeling Morn off of her was not part of the deal. Even though Adaliah benefited the most from the deal, they were still Sophie's terms. People like her wanted things on their own terms.

"Would you like to join us?"

"No, not right now. But thank you." Morn said simply, making Sophie inwardly glad. Her ears were probably ruining her ability to conceal her emotions again.

"Have you got anything new to report?" Cronus said.

"We've done a basic survey of what sort of griefing will fail to summon the city guards. The gaps in the system are so significant you could develop a martial art around them and use it to enforce order." Sophie said, folding her arms behind her. It was now a typical meeting and she couldn't be more relieved to be back on familiar ground.

"We could control people inside the city?" Tariq said, intrigued. Sophie nodded.

"So that's why Aboxorox threw me into the river. He pretended to be reading a book and when I passed by he grabbed me and dumped me over the side." Cronus said. Sophie knitted her brow with disbelief. Rox certainly would have recognized Cronus, so he must have known he was griefing his guild leader. It also explained the book he had. To think she had actually thought he was interested in reading.

"I hope this convinces you of the need for bodyguards." Tariq said to Cronus. He had a middle-eastern accent that Sophie couldn't place, but she knew he was connecting from within the States.

"What's next?" Cronus asked with a note of excitement. Sophie had an inkling he liked these meetings the most.

"I told them to come up with proposals. If you have any, I'll put them in the running." Sophie said. The Council could make demands regarding what sort of research TARPA pursued, but according to their mandate they didn't have to listen to them. Council proposals had no more weight than their own.

"What do you think?" Cronus said. It was his modus operandi. Once he identified someone competent he would shift most of the mental burden of running whatever it was they were running onto them. He didn't make decisions so much as cultivate them.

"I'm going to move TARPA back into the realm of the fantastical, now that Adaliah is prepared to take up traditional research. Things are just starting to get interesting."


	8. Chapter 2 Part 4

Chapter 2 - Part 4

The sun was finally getting low in the sky on the seventh day since the Catastrophe. Thanks to Asharia, the afternoon had proven just as hectic as the morning. The day was nowhere near over for Sophie, who was finishing up her meeting with the comely maid Lucia. They were both seated caddy-corner at the long dining room table, which they called a conference table when it didn't have food on it. Sophie gathered up the papers scattered around and clapped them together before placing them off to the side. Lucia's ankle occasionally brushed against hers under the table, just enough for her to be unsure of whether it was an accident.

"That settles it, you're now in my employ. I'll be sending you to a girl named Chandra tonight, but mostly you'll be working for me." Sophie said. Lucia beamed a smile at her, the first such expression she'd seen on the girl.

"Thank you for all this, Mistress." Lucia said.

"But there is one last thing I wanted to know:" Sophie said, covering Lucia's hand with hers and looking directly into her eyes. Lucia's breath picked up at Sophie's sudden intensity. "Lucia, are you a spy?"

"W… what?" Lucia said, taken aback, "Why would you say that, Mistress?" Lucia stood abruptly and looked around, clutching her hands to her chest with confusion. Sophie quickly rose from her seat with purpose and Lucia turned to flee, finding herself face to face with Asharia, who didn't even seem to be in the room a moment earlier.

"Surprise, gingertits! Guess who followed you all day and listened in on your little tete a tete with the Dark Elves." Asharia said, bouncing with excitement in contrast to Lucia's shivering terror. Ash was probably the only one who was happy Lucia turned out to be a spy, since it meant her babysitting mission turned into something exciting.

"You had me followed?" Lucia said to Sophie, horrified and sounding more heartbroken than she had any right to be.

"For your protection, Lucia. Dixie is a dangerous place. If I put a guard at your side it would ruin the idea that I'd given you your freedom, wouldn't it?" Sophie said. That was at least 80% true, with the other 20% being paranoia. Which turned out to be regrettably justified.

"But, oh, no…" Lucia started, putting her back to the wall and sliding down it, putting her head in her hands to sob. She was really crying.

"She's real good." Ash said, folding her arms, her lip curled up in disgust at Lucia's waterworks. "So what do we do with spies? Hang 'em high?"

"Lucia, what do they have over you?" Sophie said. Lucia continued sobbing for a period, forcing Ash and Sophie to wait for her to calm down enough to answer.

"My…" Lucia said, sniffling. Ash threw a napkin from the table down to her, which Lucia used to daub her face, "My sister."

Ash knelt down and looked at Lucia, as if fascinated, "Wow, Princess, I think I can hear the gears turning in her head with my amazing elf ears!"

"Lucia, if I get the impression you're making things up, it's the gallows for you." Sophie said, looking down her nose at the girl.

"My twin sister and I and we were captured five years ago when the Dark Elves of Sera Fel raided my village. They killed my parents and enslaved anyone worth enslaving, and trained my sister and I as courtesans. I would give anything for her, please believe me, don't… I don't know what you want me to say." Lucia said, looking down in shame.

"So there's two of them. Twin courtesans." Sophie said, gazing off into the distance.

"This is no time for twin fantasies! She's obviously lying to save her sorry freckled skin." Ash said, glaring at Sophie.

"Ash, I'm detecting a bit of racism on your part against the fair folk. Are you a dark elf? You do look like a dark elf." Sophie said, narrowing her eyes at Ash.

"No, I'm just naturally tan." Ash said.

"What's the difference?"

"Dark Elves are evil!"

Sophie narrowed her eyes and shook her head at Ash's lack of self-awareness. Maybe the ways Ash was evil were too petty and childish to rise to the level of dark elven.

"I'll make you a deal, Lucia." Sophie said. She could see Ash roll her eyes.

"I didn't think it was possible for someone without a dick to think with one. Yet, here we are!" Ash said.

"Ash, shut up. Lucia, here is the deal: send whatever notes you were going to send, only let me review them first. For most of them, I may not change anything. I also want to see the messages they're sending you. If you do this, we'll rescue your sister. If I find out you've tried to pull one over on me, we'll be at the end of our agreement and I'll turn you over to whatever justice system exists. Which, if you're unlucky, might just be Ash's whims. Or you can go, but I can't allow you to work anywhere else in Dixie, for the sake of the city." Sophie said.

"So I can just …leave?" Lucia said, not believing that could possibly be true.

"Yes, but you have to leave Dixie if you do." Sophie said.

Lucia rose to her feet unsteadily and began to creep out of the room, glancing from side to side as if a tiger were going to pounce from one direction or the other. She opened the door to the dining room and stepped out, closing it behind her. A few minutes later she let herself back in and found Sophie and Ash still there and playing a game of Egyptian Ratscrew. Decks of cards were a default item in Elder Tale, so they had been getting a lot of mileage out of them. Ash generally preferred children's games with a reflex element.

"Mistress, I've decided," Lucia said, bowing deeply, "If you help me get my sister out of Sera Fel, I'll do whatever you want. I think you're a good person."

"I'm not a good person, Lucia. I'm a normal person with a twin fantasy. You can trust me more than a good person because I actually have an incentive to rescue your sister." Sophie said, not particularly sounding as if she were kidding. Lucia blushed furiously.

"What's with this blushing ingenue bit, she's a whore and a spy." Ash whispered to her.

"Ash, she's an elf. She can hear you." Sophie whispered back. She wasn't sure why she whispered, since it was established as being useless and they had telepathy.

"I know!" Ash whispered with a grin, mostly directed at Lucia, before leaving by leaping through one of the windows leading outside. After Ash left there were three clear knocks on the door. Sophie knew who it was. A moment later her fiancee entered. Avarette looked exactly like she did in the real world, busty with shoulder-length red hair and pale skin. She had brown eyes and her character in Elder Tale was human as well. She was by now a Level 20 Assassin in the language of the game.

"Ava, this is Lucia, our new maid. Lucia, this is my fiancee Avarette." Sophie said. Women seemed to have an inherent identify-friend-or-foe when it came to competition, so she was expecting her fiancee to take this roughly. But Ava simply said:

"Oh, cool. Enjoy your meeting thing."

And left. Sophie eased herself into the seat at the head of the table and clasped her hands together, looking down at them darkly. It was either indifference or pure passive-aggression, and Sophie would greatly have preferred a more active reaction. Ava never understood Sophie's obsession with Elder Tale. She agreed to play the game, but it was doubtful the experiment would last more than a couple weeks. It still might not, if they were ejected from this bizarre event before the two week mark.

"Do you… like girls, Mistress?" Lucia said. That's right, Lucia was still here. She was a servant, not an independent girl like Ava who came and went as she pleased. Even if she wanted to leave, she would have to be dismissed.

"I used to be a man. I was transformed into a woman by dark magic." Sophie said matter-of-factly. She hated it when people begged off an explanation by claiming it was a 'long story' when it was nothing of the sort. It seemed like something worth telling Lucia, even if she didn't believe it.

"Oh, that's terrible." Lucia said. As Ash suggested, Lucia was good at her job. Sophie no longer had any idea what she was thinking. She still couldn't help but like the girl, in spite of not knowing what she was like. That was probably the power of a courtesan—the ability to deceive in spite of everyone knowing about the deception. The deception was a cooperative effort on the part of both people.

"It's not that bad. Lucia, that's enough for now." Sophie said, a bit unsure of how to dismiss a servant properly. Lucia took the hint and gave a small bow of respect before leaving Sophie alone in the dining room. There was at least a 50% chance that Lucia would still screw her over somehow, Sophie just wasn't sure how it would manifest. It could be a dozen different ways, especially if the Dark Elves found out about her being compromised and decided to up the ante regarding her sister, if such a sister even existed. She folded her arms on the table and rested her head on them. She didn't hear it when Chandra came into the dining room.

"Hey, no sleeping. You've only been awake for like nine hours." Chandra's voice called out. Sophie was indeed on the point of a nap and rose up blearily to see Chandra file in with a couple others in time for the evening meeting. Chandra was a moon-faced foxtail Sorceress with bright blue eyes and blonde hair, and the way she placed her head on the chair back emphasized her short stature. Her tan-and-white countershaded fluffy tail swished to and fro behind her. Saris, a bespectacled Half-Alv Summoner with black hair, pushed it out of the way with the back of his hand on the way to take his seat. After Saris was a dwarven Runemage named Finnsar whose thick bearded head just rose over the edge of the table. They each took seats nearest Sophie, who was seated at the head of the table.

"I'm a Freezer, Chandra. Sleep is my element. If I don't stay in touch with it, I'll lose my edge. I wouldn't expect a Foxtail to understand metaphysics." Sophie said, glancing at her nails with a haughty flair.

"Your element isn't sleep, sheesh. It's Astral, and I bet I understand it better than you do." Chandra said.

"Not at all, Chandra. Astral is the spirit world, not the literal stars. It's more akin to its new age meaning." Sophie said.

"That stuff is nonsense." Chandra said, nearly pouting.

"On Earth there was no evidence for the existence of magic or spirits, but here it is ubiquitous." Sophie said. Saris adjusted his glasses by the bridge and gave Sophie a serious look.

"Calling something magic is no different from giving up. If we want to make any progress here, we have to start asking why things are they way they are." Saris said. Two more people joined them at this point: Gorby and Farrel. Gorby was a stout dwarven Sorcerer and Farrel was an lanky black-haired elven Enchanter. They were often together and were sometimes called the odd couple.

"I agree, Saris. Let's not get bogged down with semantics; I think we're all coming from the same place." Sophie said, then, noting the atmosphere was a bit tense: "Hey Chandra. What kind of Lander lives on the Test Server?"

"I don't know Princess, what kind of Lander lives on the Test Server?" Chandra said with a smile.

"A Lunar Lander." Sophie said, raising her eyebrows, eliciting a laugh from Chandra and a groan from everyone else.

"Princess, what did they call the frontman of Alvin and the Chipmunks after his trip to Revolutionary France?" Chandra said.

"I don't know Chandra. What did they call him?"

"Half-Alvin." Chandra said, drawing a line across her neck.

"You know Chandra, as a noble that cuts pretty close to home."

"It'll only cut pretty if they sharpen it."

"Can we begin the meeting?" Saris said curtly. Sophie could detect the hint of a smile playing at the edges of his lips, in spite of his serious-business style. She nodded at him and took out a number of yellow vellum pages from a leather courier bag leaning on her oak chair.

"Here are all the proposals I've received for what we're going to focus on. I'll address them in random order." Sophie said, pulling one sheet of paper out of the stack and reading the title: "Project 'That Thing From Final Fantasy X-2 With The Hats', a method to allow people to have multiple classes and switch between them."

"Right, that's mine." Finnsar said, "It's limiting that we can't change classes, especially subclasses that might be useful. There was a system in that game where you could change your class by putting on a different hat."

"Dressphere." Chandra said, to the confusion of all, even Finnsar. She clarified: "That's what it was called."

"I only played X." Finnsar said gruffly, "That's kind of a silly name. I was hoping it would be something cooler."

"This sounds like fun and we all enjoy fashionable hats, but we don't have that level of control over items right now or an understanding of how class experience is accrued. Even if we succeeded it would only be mildly useful." Sophie said, placing the sheet with the proposal off to the side. Finnsar shrugged, looking as if he wasn't married to the idea. That was a relief. Sometimes people stuck up for the dumbest stuff. Sophie picked another sheet out of the stack and read it flatly:

"Project Beer."

"That one's mine." Said Gorby, the dwarven Runemage, seeming much more excited than Finn. He was a chemist and an amateur brewer on Earth in addition to having the brewer subclass here.

"It's not really what I'd call an 'advanced' project, but alright. Project Beer is a go. Gorby, you're principal investigator and you can use the cellar. How long will it take, do you think?" Sophie said. Judging from the looks on everyone's faces it was the most popular thing she'd said all day. Gorby and Farrel exchanged a high five.

"Maybe a month." Gorby said, wobbling his hand to signal the uncertainty. Sophie picked up the next proposal.

"Project Tarpa World Tour '92 and Fairy Ring Brute Force Solution, a process for solving the fairy ring problem by going through all the fairy rings until we figure it out. You guys really need to work on your titles." Sophie said.

"So, we know the fairy rings can be used for transportation, but a lot of data collection is necessary. Why don't we do that? We could go all over the place." Chandra said.

"Let's make that plan b of a general fast travel push. There are two Overskills I think would be achievable for the purposes of fast travel. One is Blink." Sophie said, gesturing to Chandra to fill in the rest.

"The short range teleport? Do you think we could make it a long range teleport?" Chandra said.

"That seems like a simple leap to make. But Blink only transports its caster. We need a group solution, and that's more tricky: Flip Gate." Sophie said.

"Flip Gate can only be used in dungeons, and always sends you to the same place at the zone start." Chandra said.

"Right, Chandra, but that's the point of an Overskill. If we can remove the zone-restriction on Flip Gate, then control where the other end is, we could potentially go anywhere." Sophie said, "We can always go back to fairy rings if that doesn't work."

"Do we even know how to intentionally create an Overskill?" Chandra said, sounding unsure.

"That's part of the exercise." Sophie said. She picked out another proposal from the stack.

"Project Human Instrumentality …Project, a method of direct mind-to-mind communication that may or may not result in the destruction of all individuals." Sophie said, adding, "This one certainly isn't pulling any punches." Saris cleared his throat and pushed his glasses up by the bridge, standing up with a dramatic flair.

"Unlike the rest of you, I'm bringing more to the table than dreams and promises of numbing beverages. Progress has already been made on Instrumentality—"

"I'm renaming this to Project Hive, by the way." Sophie said.

"But—" Saris whined pointlessly, losing his stride. Sophie shook her head resolutely. If she were going to destroy the world, she was going to be damned if it was coupled with a nerdy pop culture reference. Saris appeared to center himself in order to continue on in his dramatic style.

"As you're all aware, after you have accepted a few calls from someone, you can communicate with them via Telepathy without using the game interface to receive a call as long as they're in sight range." Saris said. Everyone nodded—this was true, after the first few times you could communicate with someone telepathically so long as you were in their presence. "This is an Overskill. A natural extension of that would be communication without words. Princess, what color am I thinking of?"

Saris turned to Sophie, and though she didn't hear his voice echo in her head, she knew.

"Red." Sophie said, leaning in, keenly interested.

"So how do you get from the color red to the Borg Collective?" Finn said, folding his stubby arms.

"Simple, Finn. Assuming the Overskill can be developed further, a deeper connection can be made between the thoughts of two people. At some point the skill itself is being shared, until their understanding of it is in equilibrium. Their thoughts may become intertwined to a degree that separation would seem barren and lonely. Maybe—they'd never want to part. Hence, Instrumentality."

"Maybe…" Finn said, "But anyone joining would still be choosing to do so."

"Right. Unless the collective decided it liked incorporating new minds and thoughts in, or thought it was best for everyone. Then the process of adding new ones could become involuntary, from the perspective of the individuals involved." Saris said.

"Saris, before you develop this any more I think I speak for everyone when I say there should be safeguards." Sophie said before picking up another proposal.

"Project Overlay, a method to allow a character to shapeshift?" Sophie said with disbelief.

"Wouldn't it be cool?" Chandra said, having nothing but excitement in support.

"Sure, but I don't see how it has any precedent. There aren't any shapeshifting spells in the game to build on. Let's not rely on wishful thinking." Sophie said, putting the proposal aside and taking out another one. It was tempting to pursue it, but it was probably just her own desire rather than any realistic hope of success.

"Project Word Power," Sophie said, "Is a lame codename that sounds like like educational software. But it's an interesting proposal. Farrel, I believe it was yours?"

"Right, well. Words are powerful, uh." Farrel said, "You know, how, like… well, there's an idea that words are magical, and how spells are always in latin. The aim of the project is to, um, you know. Unleash that potential. Inherent in words."

"What Farrel is trying to say is that we need a coding language to accomplish anything going forward. We can't do that Dressphere thing or anything else concrete until we have a basic control over magic. Let's call this Project Potentia. We need to figure out how to control magic on a fine level and the hypothesis is that it will be language based, since only language has the descriptive power we need. I'm making this our lead project and will request some people switch their subclass to Scribe." Sophie explained, "Farrel, how will we develop this?"

"Well, there are—there are all kinds of magical books already. We, uh, we could look at them and, just, you know, see how they do it." Farrel said. An 'ohhhh' echoed around the table, as if they were all impressed and somewhat ashamed that none of them had thought of this first.

"There you have it. Our objective for the near term is deciphering the written language of magic." Sophie said, measuring the reaction around the table. What she sensed was, generally, relief, and an impression that they had found a path out of the woods. There was the promise of beer, and at the end of Day 7 they were closer to the truth than before.

A hundred miles away, the black tower called Indigo Boundary loomed over the green of the forest canopy like the tapered and double bladed point of a sword thrown upwards towards the sky from the depths of the earth. It was ringed by four fang-shaped parapets with a high wall stretching between them and formed the seat of power for the Dark Elven kingdom of Sera Fel, which was built atop the remnants of the Light Elven kingdom Sera Dar. To Adventurers this major story event, which took place concurrent with the release of the Alchemist's Solitude expansion two years ago, was the justification to overhaul low-level zones and replace them with darker, scarier, edgier endgame content.

For the former inhabitants of Sera Dar who knew nothing of the need for content overhauls, it had been a living nightmare stretching out for over two decades. Most of them now lay in chains under the iron rule of King Darius Karst, the Dark King. Karst and his court were rare among Landers in that he and large portions of the Indigo Boundary castle were formerly considered raid content, rendering him and his royal guard inordinately powerful among the ranks of Landers. Attacking the throne room of Indigo Boundary was a job for a 96-person raid.

In the throne room with its high vaulted ceiling at the base of the tower, King Darius was seated on the Obsidian Throne, an angular, uncomfortable piece carved from a single block of the dark volcanic glass. It was decorated with gold inlay surrounding graphic scenes depicting the defeat of his enemies, the Light Elves. He was wearing an opulent set of spiky, blackened plate armor decorated with bands of shining gold. Like all Dark Elves, Darius' skin was a deep brown. He rested his head on his gloved hand as he saw his Seneschal, one of the more intelligent orcs with whom they were allied, drag in a pale and gaunt elven slave boy by his ear.

"Why are you bothering me with this again?" Darius said, sounding dangerously annoyed, as if he already knew what it was going to be about.

"You asked me to bring in anyone who was found spreadin' the rumor, my liege, so you could make an example of 'em." His Seneschal replied, sounding both fearful and indignant. Darius growled, since it was undeniable that had been what he asked.

"I didn't realize there would be so many. Just kill him and don't bother bringing me any more."

"She'll come for you. She'll save us. The Silver—" the boy yelled at him angrily before the orc snapped his neck, not wanting to get any blood on the throne room floor. Violence was only effective against and underclass if they were hopeless. That was the problem: an excess of hope.

"No, she won't. I'll see to that." Darius said.


End file.
